 
# The Write-In

### By Rose Walker

Smashwords Edition

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# Chapter One

No cliché today. This really was the first day of my life as a rich lady. I woke up just as early as I had the day before. I was still a morning glory, popping awake long before daybreak. Nothing was different about my biorhythms.

I had not won the Texas lottery. That would have been impossible, since I never buy lottery tickets. I grew up Baptist. If you're from Texas, you know what that means.

My sudden wealth came about because of an encounter during a traffic jam.

Here's what happened: I sued a mean guy named Harland Warren and I won. I cannot reveal how much money is involved, because I would have to hand it all back. I get to keep the money only if I don't break the terms of a confidentiality agreement. I can say that writing the amount of my settlement requires using two commas.

Harland Warren was an unscrupulous Houston power player. In addition to bonds, personal-injury litigation, finance (all flavors), construction, hotels, cantinas—oh, and car dealerships, his "holdings" included officeholders and a cadre of people in my line of work: marketing. Some of us knew the truth about Harland, but since we were collectively scared of him (for good reason); we pretended that he was another rough-and-tumble entrepreneur turned civic leader. It was an open secret that lurking below his veneer of generosity was a corrupt and brazen bully.

How corrupt? How brazen? Harland was so powerful that most politicos got his blessing before they made a move. Harland knew how to buy people.

Never meeting the man face to face had been close enough for me. The chatter about his business practices reminded me of the old line "We can do this easy or we can do it hard."

I never wanted to be noticed by this scary character.

However, my determination to stay out of his way did not work.

I came into Harland's sights because I helped get his girlfriend arrested for shoplifting. My client, Maria Diaz, sold hand-crafted jewelry. The pieces were gorgeous and expensive. I could not afford them. Few people could, not even Maria; she operated her store with inventory placed on consignment.

One fateful day, Maria and I were in her shop rearranging the jewelry in the display cases. We both saw the woman in the tight jeans and turquoise silk shirt walk boldly out the door wearing the bracelet she had asked to see. Swish denim swish denim swish—she was out the door and down the sidewalk.

Maria and I ran out the door behind the shoplifter. If that bracelet disappeared, Maria would have to pay the owner. I remember thinking that if I couldn't afford the bracelet, then for sure I wouldn't let this brazen chick steal it.

She ran a few yards before her stiletto heels made her stumble. We caught up. Maria grabbed the back of the shoplifter's shirt. I got a two-arm hold on one leg. She couldn't walk without dragging my dead weight, though she tried.

"Call the cops," I yelled to Maria.

"How can I?"

"Use her cell phone. In her jeans. Reach in her pocket."

While I restrained our captive by hugging her thigh, Maria pried the phone out of her jeans and thumbed 911. We held on until the patrol car pulled up.

With me pumping courage into her, and it didn't take much pumping; Maria filed charges against Miss Sticky Fingers, a charmer named Tiffany Johnson.

From the instant time Maria grabbed the cell phone, Tiffany had been hollering the name Harland Warren. Her problem at that moment was that Maria and I were emboldened because we knew Tiffany was not Mrs. Harland Warren, whose image was familiar from society media. Tiffany, though not his wife, was an up-close-and-personal friend of Harland Warren.

## § § §

That contretemps made me bothersome to Harland Warren. The ensuing news coverage about the Tiffany bust explains why he began to refer to me as a frustrated vigilante with a felon for a husband.

There was substantial truth in that characterization. What could I do except suck it up?

Precious little, until cell-phone technology and Harland's loud mouth interceded.

It happened on a Tuesday. I was heading into downtown in one of three lanes of eastbound traffic stopped at a light.

I had the radio tuned to a morning talk show, hoping one of my clients would call in and mention her business on the air, as I had coached her to do. I was oblivious to other cars. I concluded that my client was not going to get on the air, so I decided to switch stations.

Just as I leaned forward, I heard my name. I leaned back against the seat. Then I heard an off-color reference to Nina Vaughn. I recognized the voice coming from my dashboard.

Turns out, a talk-show host had Harland on the air, live, from his limo, promoting his upcoming charity golf tournament.

The host was just about to hand off to the eye-in-the-sky chopper guy.

Spotting me in the adjacent lane of cars, Harland said, "There's Nina Vaughn in that Camry. She's a vicious cantaloupe." Only he didn't say cantaloupe. He said something I won't repeat.

After the traffic report, the talk-show host had another caller ready. He did not mention what had gone out over the air 90 seconds earlier.

## § § §

What somebody allowed to go out over the air was slander.

Since I was already a target of his undying fury, due to the Tiffany Johnson incident, I decided to sue Harland. I reasoned that he was obsessed with maintaining the perception of himself as a gentleman and civic leader. Proving defamation in a court of law should have been easy. He compared me to a private body part on radio.

But getting someone to take my case was not easy. Since the slander came from a kingpin with a long reach and a short fuse, getting a lawyer to take the case seemed impossible. The big-name lawyers wouldn't take my case and the hungry young lawyers could not afford to take it on a contingency basis. I could not prove that the slander had happened without an attorney.

But I have a special lawyer friend, a guardian in fact, by the name of Foster Adamson. He volunteered to represent me when no one else would, or could.

Foster's legal maneuvering consisted of nothing more than a couple of elegantly phrased letters. But that correspondence was enough to convince Harland that sixteen per cent of Houston commuters heard him deliver a nasty string of profanity that was aimed at no one but me, since he used my name. And he did it while being chauffeured by an off-duty police officer. Eventually, we would find witnesses and put on a show trial somewhere in the Houston market.

What a competent image-maker knows, from experience, is that perception and reality may not be the same thing, but they are inextricable. For sure, the image-makers on Harland's payroll knew that. It's what they got paid for.

Harland's settlement offer was expeditious, generous and time-limited. I agreed to the usual requirement of confidentiality. I wanted "the said incident" to subside as much as Harland did.

He was the one who talked dirty on the radio, but I was the one who blushed. All the way to the bank I blushed.

As for me, I was undecided about what I would do with the rest of my life, but I knew I could ramp up my image now that I was what bankers call a high-net-worth individual.

I would start with instant gratification. I needed to update my look to update my appearance to match my new persona.

# Chapter Two

My notion was that I would be better able to imagine the rest of my life after I addressed my own image. Make that self-image.

Foster met me at the Galleria. He invited himself on this excursion. That was odd. He said he wanted to be sure I had my nerves under control. I would have been offended if almost anyone else said that, but, coming from somebody who'd just helped me get a big, fat settlement, I laughed.

"Fine," I said. "I need a truth-teller with good taste to help me work on my new image. I need you because you can't fib about aesthetics. Your eyes give you away."

My mission at the Galleria was to fulfill a long-stalled whim: replicating outfit I had seen in my mind's eye for years. This fantasy of mine was me wearing a well-fitting gun-metal pantsuit with mauve silk shirt and gorgeous, yet foot-friendly, kid pumps. Leather-lined, the pumps would be, with two-inch heels and a wide toe box.

In all of the Galleria, no gun-metal pantsuit was to be found, that is, not one roomy enough for my hips. How sad. I had been flexible, willing to buy a jacket and trousers as separates, if only I could find that snazzy neutral shade. No luck.

## § § §

"It's not about the elusive gun-metal outfit, you know," Foster observed as we situated ourselves for lunch.

I braced for one of his pointed insights. I squirm when I sense he's about to share one. He gets solemn and lawyerly. Worse, he almost always hits the logic nail on the head.

"I surrender. Why is my sudden urge to splurge on something I've lusted after for years not really about what I lusted after and, thanks to you, can now afford?"

I crossed my fingers, hoping he didn't know the shopping trip was about me trying to push back against feeling the onset of dowdiness. "Presentation is perception is reality. I need a presentation suit," I said.

I cited the analogy of two restaurants with the same menu items, but the one that used cloth table covers and napkins, like where we were sitting, could charge ten dollars more for dinner. "That comes directly from client experience."

"Of course you want the outfit," he said. "But you want it because you want to overwrite your history. You want a new role in a new show. You are fed up with playing around the margins, maybe, hawking necklaces and wine bars that serve nachos. You saw some woman wearing an expensive suit in that color and you were struck by the impact she made. Something inside you said 'Oh, that's how glamorous women dress.' You conned yourself into thinking it was only about the outfit."

"May I rebut?"

"Go ahead."

"It would make me look twelve pounds slimmer and eight years younger."

"Of course. You want to shift gears, but you're going about it the wrong way. So you run headlong toward what you think is glamour. Watch out. You might lose what makes you the original Nina Vaughn. You need to be your own client. Sell yourself to yourself."

Sometimes it's what you hear that rocks your world, not something that happens to you. What Foster said made me feel a thwack behind my corneas. It was an overdose of truthiness. I felt unwell.

Foster apologized. "I'm sorry. Can I rewind what I said and tone it down? You look like I kicked you in the head. All I wanted to do was to propose a new perspective."

"Thanks for not saying paradigm shift." He knew how much I detest psycho-jabber phrases like paradigm shift.

"Are you okay? You look woozy."

"Thanks. I'll be okay. But you underestimate the force of your jabs, Foster." I realized I sounded whiny.

"Sorry. I intended to talk about myself today. I've been putting it off, but I woke up saying this would be the day to announce something. I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. Not today. The life I want to change is mine, so maybe I was impatient just then, ready to talk about myself. Want to ride with me and see something interesting?"

Half my quiche remained on the plate, but I'd eaten enough to feel satisfied. I told him sure, I'd go for a ride.

He did a head gesture in the direction of the door.

## § § §

Foster headed in an unexpected direction, out the Old Beaumont Highway that predates the Interstate.

He turned onto a two-lane road framed by narrow shoulders and drainage ditches.

"Welcome to the strange world of Davey Wiggins Road," he said.

The buildings going past were a mix of the old, the unsightly and the peculiar, some of them unidentifiable as to purpose, age, or ownership. "Skuzzy mixed-use" would be an honest but inadequate description of the area; repair shops, assembly businesses, shooting ranges, junk yards (some of them in the front yards of people's houses), churches, trailer parks and, incongruously, here and there, a McMansion.

The tallest structures were stacks of old tires, some of them three or four times higher than the roof of Foster's Mercedes.

Almost all residential structures, trailers being the exception, were situated on large parcels of land. And there were patches of vacant, overgrown land. Davey Wiggins Road was rough and industrial but, at the same time, rural. The land use was incoherent. Contiguous properties had conflicting purposes. A barbecue stand next to a stable. A beer joint next to a house. Among the residents were horses, goats, and chickens.

According to Foster, Davey Wiggins Road was Houston's last outpost of individualism. "It's Dodge City or Hole in the Wall out here," he said.

It was not Foster's type of place.

## § § §

We arrived at his destination: a tin building, raised off the ground on pylons with parking below. It sat in the middle of several acres of swamp grass. A crushed shell driveway led right up to the slab foundation. The building resembled a beach house. It knew in an instant that an architect conceived the plan.

Tin buildings were the highest postmodern form of pretension in Houston.

Foster expected no raves from me; he knew my opinion of tin buildings. He once took me on an architect's tour of tin buildings, before their cachet in Houston began to wane. They were intended to impress people, but to me, they are depressing–too harsh and snooty. One of those metallic horrors could bring down the property values of dozens of nearby historic structures.

This tin house, though, was not on a small urban lot. It was all alone on Davey Wiggins Road. It did not detract from nearby property. That wasn't possible. Out here, in the middle of architecture nowhereland, Foster's tin building seemed appropriate. It looked utilitarian and full of purpose. The tin building had no curb appeal. On the other hand, there were no curbs along Davey Wiggins Road, nor lawns, flower beds or sidewalks.

What Foster's edifice resembled was an angular spacecraft.

Its closest neighbor was a trailer park, tacky but well-maintained. MAGNOLIA GARDENS its sign said, although the flowers painted on the sign looked suspiciously like dogwood. I was drawn more to the rows of trailers, with their carports and awnings, than to the tin building. And there really were a pair of magnolia trees inside the Magnolia Gardens entry gate.

## § § §

When he opened the front door with a key, Foster didn't have to tell me he was the building's owner. I sensed his excitement. The interior looked like something he would own. The furniture consisted of built-ins: desks, banquettes, and shelves. None of the usual paraphernalia for living or working was anywhere to be seen. There were no phones, computers, or chairs. No coffee maker. No TV set. It smelled like my potting shed.

"It's not what I would have designed for myself," he said. That was a relief, because this was one odd structure.

"I got a fantastic deal on the property. I figured it was a sign."

"You don't believe in signs."

He never did, even when we were kids. He always claimed that people who believe in signs are people who don't trust their own intelligence.

"I don't. You're right. I just said that for your benefit since you do believe in signs. I want you to think of this real-estate acquisition as a mystical sign. What I do believe in is the value of good timing. Want to hear more? It's about you."

If that was the case, of course I did.

I followed him to an angle formed by leather-covered benches in the large room that extended across the front of the building. He sat. I sat. I assumed this was a reception area.

Foster said he wanted "to start at the bottom line and work up" to what it was that he wanted to tell me.

## § § §

His big announcement was that he had left his law firm. That was huge. I was glad to be sitting.

He knew it was time to go when he calculated he had "saved 20 tons of pompous ass." At least, that's what he said. I wasn't convinced.

The concluding line was a proposal that we go into business together, operating out of this building.

"Since you've moved up a rung on the socio-economic ladder, a new venture seems even more appropriate for you, too," he said.

He smiled and said no more, waiting for a reaction from me.

"I'm not a lawyer, counselor," I said.

"I'm not starting a law practice. I'm thinking of management and investments, maybe marketing and public affairs."

What in Hades was this about? His concept was vague enough to mean anything.

"Marketing? Foster, are you planning to compete with me?"

"No, silly girl. I'm talking about a new venture with you. We'd be partners."

I had witnessed too many partnerships in extremis in my business life not to be wary of his idea. I reminded him I didn't like partnerships.

"A partnership crack-up can be worse than a divorce," I said.

"I know this. I'm a lawyer."

"Besides, my business is rolling along." It was. I was finally at a place where I could pick and choose my clients.

"Oh, you can keep your Nina Vaughn shop if that's what you think you need, and still be in business with me. But whether you realize it or not, Nina Vaughn and Associates will be taking on water soon. You have a target on your back. Harland Warren is a thug, and you and I have just pantsed him good. He spends a lot of money trying to look good. He's going to keep you from having bankable clients even if he has to use rough stuff."

Aha. The V-word. Vindictive. Or vendetta. Either one.

Yeah, well, for years there'd been a whispered tale circulating about a tough entrepreneur who refused to sell his business when Harland wanted to take it over. Not too long afterward, the holdout died of a heart attack, caused by the shock when the gentleman noticed a bullet had just entered his head.

## § § §

With my big fat settlement check in my bank account, I hoped Harland and I were even. But Foster might be right about the future of Nina Vaughn and Associates.

The third act in Harland versus Nina would be retaliation.

But why would Foster want to link arms with me, with the target on my back?

"What's going on, Foster?"

He fidgeted on the leather bench. He closed his eyes and remained silent.

I waited until, finally, his face lighted.

"I've got it. Think of it as a sequel," he said. "You know how you used to tell me I was like Hubbell in The Way We Were? And you said you might be like the character Katy? Well, close your eyes. My sequel starts at that same spot in front of the Plaza Hotel where the movie ends. In my sequel, Hubbell spies Katy and tries to hide before she sees him. Sequel Katy looks great, same as the end of the actual movie. She's got some wrinkles and a few more pounds. But Sequel Hubbell? Sequel Hubbell looks awful. He's lost most of his hair, he has bags under his eyes and he's bored. I don't want to become that Sequel Hubbell."

Foster said he was aware that people saw him as an aging pretty boy first, and a crack attorney second. He rambled about his belief that a person is what the person does.

"You, on the other hand, only need to lose a few pounds, develop a personal style, and go out and find your Mister Cohen."

"My Mister Cohen?"

"Yes, remember? I told you before. The most interesting character in the movie, even though he's never on the screen, is Mister. Cohen. He ends up being with Katy, and so Mister Cohen is never bored."

I was unnerved by Foster's portrait of his avatar, Sequel Hubbell.

I sidestepped. "I think of myself more as Annie Hall than as Katy in The Way We Were."

"Don't be silly. You've already tried on your Annie Hall persona and it didn't work. You're not built like Diane Keaton. You were out yesterday prowling for a gun-metal pantsuit that definitely is not Annie Hall style."

"Okay, I pick Isabella Rossellini as my new inspiration. And you don't have to be Hubbell with a paunch like the stupid sequel you just described. Why don't you be ol' gorgeous Baryshnikov, like his Sex and the City character?"

That made him laugh. "Isabella Rossellini–with a gym membership."

He laughed at his own line. In all the years I knew him, I never before heard a Foster give out with such a belly laugh. Foster did not have a mirthful nature.

Something deep in Foster seemed to be breaking loose, but darn if I knew what or why.

So I broached the uncomfortable subject we always avoided.

"Is this about people thinking we're a couple?"

I waited for a grimace. It didn't happen. A half-smile emerged, an enigmatic expression on his strikingly handsome face that morphed into a big grin. I was reminded of how photogenic he'd always been.

"Nina, I have a flash for you. We are a couple, if perception is reality like you always say."

Balderdash. Foster and I were not a couple. But we were a duo, in a relationship going back to when we were teenagers.

## § § §

You never forget your first love, and Foster was mine. Until he escaped my rabid puppy love by going away to college, I followed him, wrote letters to him, and sat in front of his house until he came home at night.

For a few days one summer, years ago, I got to have him as my boyfriend. His regular girlfriend came back from Europe in September, the pair of them resumed going steady.

Tons of lyrics have been written and wailed about the ones not chosen, or the ones abruptly dumped. Every word of every sad song fit to my anguished teen self.

Being the kind of guy he is, Foster still feels guilty about cutting me loose the summer before eleventh grade. I've told him over and over that I'm sure I knew that long-ago summer, how it would end. At 16, for me, the going up was worth the coming down. That may be true, or I've created a legend in my own mind about our summer romance that minimizes the heartbreak.

It's normal to take comfort where you can. So I took comfort in another's girl's tears when Foster backed away from Glenda, the other girl. I suspected, even back then, that Foster didn't really love that girl, Glenda, more than he loved me. He just liked the way she looked: like a magazine ad for shampoo.

Maybe my parents sensed the absence of danger when it came to Foster. That would explain why they let me stay out past midnight when I went somewhere with him.

But no matter how guilty Foster felt now about what his teen self did to my teen self, it's nothing compared to how badly he feels about his ex-wife. Not once has he ever confided in me about what was said when he asked her for a divorce. I just knew he felt guilty because I knew Foster.

We kept talking in the tin house until I said I was tired and famished.

# Chapter Three

On the old Beaumont highway, next to a tire yard and within a few blocks of a sprawling halfway-house for parolees, we seated ourselves at Gil's Hiway Grill. The early supper menu was a Chinese buffet, a hint that the new Asian owners kept the place's pre-existing name in order to spare themselves the expense of a new sign.

For the price, the food was tasty, if predictable. After paying, Foster picked up a menu flyer.

"I'll be back next week, Stephanie," he told the girl-child who took his money. Stephanie beamed. That was the Foster effect at work: effortless and irresistible.

Back to the tin house he drove, alongside a grassy incline. Houston is so flat that any geological feature that rises more than 36 inches is man-made.

I was seeing the opposite side of the road from what I saw on the trip to Gil's, when I hadn't noticed the long grassy slope.

"Is that a reservoir?"

"No, it's a landfill," he said. "This morning's coffee grounds will be there next week."

Back at the tin building, we resumed our discussion of future plans and possibilities.

I said I thought he had a hidden agenda and wondered where he had it stashed.

Foster said he always hides his agenda whenever he can.

"That's why my clients and my partners have to trust me. I keep my theories to myself so nobody can get leverage on me."

"Well, it's not going to work today. It's just the opposite. I've been taken to a weird building in the middle of nowhere and invited to set up shop as your partner. Nothing you've said today makes sense to me."

He disagreed.

"Okay, explain yourself."

First, according to him, my run-in with Harland Warren made me an involuntary public figure. The bizarre story about Harland's blooper would live for years in cyberspace. As a communications consultant, I would be more famous than I could make any client, which would be bad for business since people pay me to help them get attention, not to compete with them for buzz.

"So, you're saying I should write the Houston edition of You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. You're saying I should get out of Houston?"

"No. But I am saying he can get to you through your client base. He can cause them leasehold problems, health-inspection problems, license problems, labor problems, insurance problems, or loan problems. He can crush a business like your business, or any of your clients' businesses."

None of that could be denied.

Foster said we should make a virtue of necessity. It was one of his favorite lines, one that he consequently over-utilized.

"If your analysis of my predicament is correct, I'm well off financially but washed up professionally, right?"

"Precisely. You'd best operate under that assumption. You've offended a sociopath who thrives on lopsided conflicts. He's like the bully who beats kids up on the playground with his buddies holding the victim's arms. The only way for you to remain a winner is to be sure there's no round two."

"Or, I could go into business with you, making sure I'm never in the ring with him by myself."

"Precisely," he said.

It struck my funny bone to watch Foster pronounce the word "precisely," because he always does everything so precisely. Speaks precisely. Dresses precisely. Handles tableware precisely. Pronounces the word "precisely" in a precise manner.

"So, my choices are oblivion or else going into business with somebody I was love struck over when I was 16 years old. Does that summarize accurately?"

"Substantially, that's how I see it, minus your dramatic prose."

"Whoa, Foster. I happen to be something of a dramatic person. I couldn't help myself then. Everything was tragic to me. To this day, I get the blues when I think back to then. You can still be intimidating with all that perfection."

"You were such an intense kid, Nina," he said, ignoring my dig about his perfectionism. "I remember feeling that I was having more fun that summer, all those crazy antics in the mall and the library and going to Galveston, than you were. You were so intense that I was afraid you might sleep on our porch. Even as a dumb boy, I sensed something out of whack with you. I hadn't ever heard the word 'manic' back then. But oh, how much fun you could cook up when you were in one of your fun modes."

"My parents said it was puppy love. You know what they say about puppy love, Foster? That it's real to the puppy." I had waited years to shoot him that line about how a puppy in love feels.

He missed the point, or ignored it.

"You really were like a puppy that summer, playful and energetic, but always looking at me with those eyes. I felt guilty when I abandoned the puppy."

This conversation was long overdue. I felt so good hearing admit his guilty feeling that I decided to dial it up a bit.

"I wanted to jump off the planet. Everything was so heavy. I felt like I was living in an iron lung, unable to breathe."

"You are wound up today, aren't you?"

Yes, I was. The tin house and the recent windfall obviously were cathartic. I would edit my thoughts before saying anything else. How much did I want to say to him? For years, I lived under Foster's spell, dazzled by his near-perfect way of being. I liked being seen out and about with him, sharing admiring glances. He could still hurt me if he went away. But I didn't want to be anything but truthful. This was a turning point of some kind.

"I can't remember exactly what it was like when I was 16 and you ended the magic abruptly. Then, after high school, when you went away and didn't answer my letters, one day I just knew. I knew you would never tumble into any infatuation the way I did over you. Glenda didn't take my place because there was no place. I just knew. I got it. I understood."

"So did you tell yourself that you weren't the problem, that Foster had a problem?"

"No. I always wanted to be attached to you, but it became a status thing, not a hormone thing, combined with a best-friend thing."

Foster surprised me the next moment. "Do we need to talk about our divorces or our kids?"

"I've had enough of that," I said. "We know enough about one another's exes and kids not to have to beat those drums."

"If you ever have a family concern, would you tell me? I think you pretend you have a son who is in sleep-away camp so you don't have to deal with where your son actually is based."

"Oh, I deal with it, but I know he volunteered for the Army. He's never out of my thoughts for long. My way of dealing with it is sticking with local news and not talking about him. I block out anything that deals with the Middle East except when I'm talking to him."

"I respect that. You did good with that boy." That was true, but I also was lucky.

"I'm guessing everything is okay with your three?"

"Sure. Like their mother, they are accepting of me, but like her they are too expensive. But, you know, it's only money. Fortunately, I think all three of them have learned how to pay their own way. I've made it clear there shall be no trust fund bums."

That was all he said. I wasn't as curious about Foster's family as he was about mine.

## § § §

It took all that soul-bearing conversation to get us to the point where we could talk about the here and the now, Foster's business idea.

We agreed to set aside the money considerations initially. Neither of us would starve or suffer exposure from the elements.

Instead, I wanted to understand exactly what Foster had in mind.

"Remember that time you called in to that talk show when they were asking listeners what they would do if they knew they had only 24 hours to live? And you said you'd drive around in traffic shooting paint balls at the cars of bad drivers?"

I remembered.

"That's my point. You can never stop the bastards from running other people off the road, but sometimes you can pelt them with paint balls."

That would be the mission of our partnership, he said, adding "We each have more money than time."

I agreed with him.

It seemed to me that what Foster was proposing was genuinely wacky. Still, as for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, what he suggested was not too far off the point.

As daylight was waning and there was no power to the tin house, Foster made a phone call.

"Stan? I'm over here trying to have a meeting but it's getting dark and I still don't have power. Will you help me out again?"

# Chapter Four

"Let's go next door. Stan's office is air-conditioned."

"Go calling at that trailer park? Am I appropriately dressed?"

"Nina, I like you so much more when you aren't being facetious."

Out the door he started walking, with that double-time gait of somebody who's been royally ticked off. Normally, Foster encourages my attempts at being droll. But not this time. He picked up his pace until he was almost sprinting across the soggy ground toward the adjacent trailer park. He didn't wait for me to catch up.

## § § §

Next door, a man wearing jeans and a work shirt splattered with green paint was standing at the entrance. I thought to myself that he looked like Andrew Jackson's picture on the twenty-dollar bill. He wore the same immobile expression as the portrait on money, not smiling, but not frowning either. He looked hard, but in a healthy way. An outdoorsy type.

He stared at me unabashedly, as if he knew but didn't care that staring is rude.

Foster made the introductions, tersely.

"Stan Deleon, meet Nina Vaughn. She's a longtime friend of mine."

"Pleasure, ma'am," Mr. Deleon said. Then he was off several paces ahead of us, before I could say anything except "Likewise."

He led the way to a trailer with a sign that said OFFICE. Neither man held the door for me. I brought up the rear and held the door for myself.

Inside, the trailer was set up to serve as a combination office and work shop. Tools and spools of wire and conduit hung neatly from pegboard. Pencils and paper had been laid out neatly at a sturdy table.

I figured, from that evidence, this evening was not the first time Stan had accommodated Foster's need for a work room. They were well acquainted. That was obvious.

## § § §

Foster actually had our prospective partnership pre-planned and documented. All that he asked of me was to say aye or nay. The document stated that I was to agree that our partnership would offer services in the area of community relations, to include "issues advocacy, fund-raising, crisis management, and strategic and legal counsel in the protection of a community's environmental quality of life, economic well-being, and improvement of the delivery of public services."

I asked Foster for some specific examples of those services. I explained that I had no objection to pursuing the stated noble purposes, and that, in fact, the verbiage sounded like what all PR super heroes do. I just needed to be certain my credentials were adequate.

"It means we help people who are fighting the good fight," he said. We could dabble in anything from grant-writing to political campaigns, lobbying to advertising, tax protests to disaster relief.

Was that a mission statement? It didn't sound like a bona fide business plan.

As long as I had known him, Foster had never revealed any idealism. Perfectionism, yes. Ethical conduct, yes. But Foster was not a champion of the threatened or oppressed, or even the under-funded. Not until now.

"I'll email this document to your computer. You can print it out when you get home. Now, though, I want to show you something spectacular."

He flipped open his cell phone.

"Stan. Want to come across to my place? I want to show this lady the colony. Thought you might want to join us for the show."

Returning across the expanse this time, Foster walked alongside me. Night had settled. A few yards ahead of us, Stan Deleon shone a flashlight.

When we re-entered the tin house, Foster did not clap on the battery-powered light. Only the flashlight in Stan's hand, pointing at the floor, guided our steps. The two guys led me to an empty space on the back side of the building, a cavernous room with a window wall. We just stood there for a moment, the time it took for me to adjust to the outside view.

Foster pulled my head toward him and whispered in my ear "Do you see what I see?"

I could not see what he saw. Foster fumbled around the baseboard, locating a pair of night-vision goggles that he placed in my hand.

In a moment, through the goggles, I saw them: big birds. I could see four or five, but sensed that more were out there, swooping and wading. The one nearest us, about 15 feet on the other side of the window wall, was standing on a nest atop a pylon, its legs so spindly that they looked like dotted lines.

"Herons. Feeding. I think there are three chicks in the nest," Foster whispered.

He expected a reaction from me, I could tell.

"Impressive," was all I could think to say. Anybody who grew up on the Gulf Coast had seen herons. Herons are not endangered. Herons are no big deal. But the nest had significance for Foster because he was acquainted with these birds as individuals. In silence, we watched the nearest heron until it left its perch.

Then, hands on my shoulders, following behind Stan, Foster led me through the dark rooms to the front entry before speaking.

"Do you know what effect human interference has on them?"

"It can't be beneficial," I said.

"You want to know why I needed to show you the wetlands behind this place?"

"Well, yes. Does it have anything to do with me?"

I was apprehensive. I hoped Foster was not setting me up; I did not want to take on a bird sanctuary as our first client.

## § § §

Stan spoke. "You done with me, man?"

"Oh, sorry. Yes, thanks, Stan. I got lost in thought here. I need to explain the whole situation to this lady, and I haven't figured out where to start."

I almost fell asleep on the long ride back to my house. Foster's insistence on escorting me inside and checking the rooms reminded me that somebody might be out to zap me.

I would have fallen asleep if I'd settled into a warm bath. I didn't want to, though. I wanted to reflect and to order my recollection of the day's events.

So I brewed coffee and took a cup with me when I went to bed sans bath.

Was it my imagination, or with his lean frame, did that man, Stan, remind me of a heron? He was one of those lanky types with potential to clean up well. Not that he wasn't craggy and not that there wasn't grease on the side of his face.

One thing was obvious; Foster was comfortable with Stan. They had a free and easy way of anticipating one another's actions. I'd seen that kind of unison in doubles tennis, and on the dance floor.

I'd learned from clients that coordinated efficiency is one of the hallmarks of a successful restaurant kitchen, too. Nothing is wasted, not time, not words. Practice. Teamwork. That was it. The pair of them were teamed up.

Lying there, doing self-talk in my head, I figured out what it was about those two men; they liked and trusted one another.

My son used a word repeatedly in his emails: buddy. Even when he was in elementary school, running or skating or bike riding with other boys, he called his friends his buddies. I could tell from his messages that he still thrived in the company of his buddies, the more so when they were under attack.

I could not remember Foster ever being or having a buddy when we were kids. But now it seemed he'd found one. I should have been pleased for him.

Instead, I was irritated. I was curious and, loathe as I was to call it what it was, I felt a twinge of jealousy.

I couldn't doze off. My relaxed state of drowsiness was gone. I shouldn't have had that coffee because now the caffeine had me over-stimulated.

I booted up my computer and searched for articles on male bonding.

When it all seemed to run together and my eyelids started to droop, I turned on the bath water.

# Chapter Five

My standard procedure in business was to insist that a client starting a new business throw a kickoff party, inviting friends, family, neighbors and their network associations. That was because a kickoff focuses the entrepreneur on an initial event, small but significant: telling the market that the business is open. But more than that, a kickoff party is a request for support.

My insistence on kicking off our partnership with a party led to my first spat as Foster's business partner. I insisted on a kickoff party. He balked.

"I know those parties are part of the Nina Vaughn formula," he said.

That was a put-down. We right-brain creative types resent the notion that anything we do is formula-based. For me, the kickoff party is a "principle," the same as keeping good accounting records is a principle of good business.

So I sassed Foster back.

"Unless people come for a meet-and-greet, they might think this tin monstrosity is a meth lab."

I foresaw image problems for our business if we didn't open up to the neighbors on Davey Wiggins Road. We'd create a textbook PR problem for ourselves.

Either I made a cogent argument, despite its being pulled out of my ear, or Foster could see I was vexed.

"Sorry I got you so agitated. Didn't mean to hit a sore spot," he said.

"Well, okay. But I think you knew exactly what you were doing. You did it on purpose." Why couldn't I stop nattering? Was I defensive because I'd been forced to defend my business philosophy too many times?

My belief in kickoff parties comes from know they always work on some level. A kickoff party doesn't just put the world on notice that a new business is entering the marketplace. It puts the new owner on alert. If the party is a crowd pleaser, you've rolled out your new enterprise. If no one comes, you have information to process and questions to answer, maybe kinks to iron out.

I didn't convince Foster, of course, because he was concealing his real agenda. We were talking game plan while looking at different scoring objectives.

He tried an alternative line of reasoning.

"But we are in a different situation here, Nina. Why don't we first sign up some clients and, when we've signed up a client or two, then throw the kickoff party? We could include our clients."

"Foster, think. We don't even know where to go shopping for clients." I twanged, sounding nasal, the way I do when I'm trying to sound sincere.

Why did he argue? I wondered if this was how our partnership would operate. Only a few days earlier, he was courting me, telling me I was a marketing genius. Now my simple suggestion for a party had us embroiled in a battle of wills.

I stomped out. The steel door of the tin house clanked behind me. I marched down the front steps, over the marsh grass and spongy ground, across the crushed-shell driveway, over to the trailer park and through the gate.

I knocked on the office trailer door.

"Yes ma'am."

That man, Stan, was directly behind me.

I jumped. It was the mid-morning on a sunny day, but he seemed to have materialized out of a mist. Expressionless, he just stood there, staring.

"I'd like to ask your opinion about something." That came out sounding coquettish. Was I flirting? Probably so.

I felt so foolish I might have run back to the tin house except that my shoes were so heavy with mud I could barely pick up my feet. What made me feel so goofy, other than the wet dirt clinging to my feet and ankles?

"Do you want to ask me about having a debutante ball or some shindig next door?"

He smiled. Surprise. Stan had perfect toothpaste-ad teeth, not hard-life teeth. His smile gave way to a chuckle. Laugh lines animated his face. He was amused, which made me want to answer him "no," but I sensed he would not have believed me.

At that moment, Stan whipped out his cell phone. It must have been set on vibrate; it made no sound.

"Yeah, she's right here. Okay. Heading that way, man."

Stan loped toward the tin house. I slogged behind him, slinging mud each time I lifted a foot off the ground.

When I reached the tin house, both guys struggled to keep a straight face, or rather, two straight faces—one each. I felt like the cartoon character that the other characters laugh at.

Foster sounded patronizing but he looked amused.

"Not that I want to encourage the kind of end run you just tried, but if you want to have one of your kickoff parties, you can," he said. "Stan's going to assist you. He's the society maven around here."

With a sarcastic tone, but not overdoing it, I said "Oh thank you both, gentlemen."

"Stay right there, Nina," Foster said. "I'll bring some paper towels. Leave your muddy shoes outside." He went.

Stan waited with me as I pulled off my shoes.

"Miss Nina, about socializing out this way. We really have to watch out for some of these people. Within half a mile of where we're standing, we've got cock-fight promoters and meth labs and prostitutes and crazies, not to mention the occasional escapee or pack of wild hogs. Why do you think I've got that iron fence around my property? Like I already told Foster, you may have a good idea, but only if you let me decide who comes. I've got some classy little old ladies living over there. They pass the time playing bridge and growing vegetables in containers. They'd love to get dressed up for a tea party. And we've got some church people down the road, fine folks who know how to conduct themselves. So let's invite the nice folks who behave themselves and be careful not to stir up the hell raisers."

So Davey Wiggins Road was maybe not Mayberry. Perhaps this environment was more dangerous than I figured. I already knew from Foster that Stan always carried a pistol.

"He probably takes it in the shower, holding it with one hand while he soaps up with the other," was how Foster had put it.

Stan was the de facto law on Davey Wiggins Road.

## § § §

I was anxious to see the guest list, but Stan insisted the guests would be a surprise on party day. "More fun," was all he said.

The two guys decorated the place with ten dozen helium-filled balloons, taking the somber edge off the interior of the tin house. I helped by arranging finger sandwiches, a high-quality Virginia baked ham, cupcakes, brownies, veggie tray, potato skins, punch, fruit salad, fresh fruit, and four varieties of candy mints, in pastel shades as well as chocolate.

Honoring Stan's suggestion, we over-provisioned so our guests could take home the surplus.

"You can feed these little ladies for a week on leftovers if you plan it right," he said. "Leftover food is their favorite kind of party favor."

## § § §

It was two o'clock on a Saturday afternoon when Stan ferried the first white-haired lady across to the tin house in a golf cart.

He introduced as "Miz Pearl Deleon, my stepmother." Seven more old ladies arrived from Stan's trailer park, all of them talkative and feisty.

# Chapter Six

"Here comes the Blessing Bus," Pearl Deleon said. She and Stan headed down the steps to meet the bus, with me following. It was a blue-and-white mini-bus. On the side was painted "We're on our way to the House of the Lord. Follow the Blessing Bus."

Stan held out a hand to the driver, helping her make the long step to the ground.

"Juanita Evans, meet Nina Vaughn," He said.

I sensed this Juanita Evans was someone who would become unforgettable. It wasn't the surprise of seeing a well-turned-out woman driving a mini-bus in a slim-skirted suit, although that was unexpected–considering the ambience. Nor was it the chains of crystal beads wound around her forearm.

It was her passengers: half a dozen little girls. The older ones were in school uniforms. This may have been a Saturday afternoon, but these girls had not been at the mall, not wearing those plaid jumpers and white blouses.

## § § §

Except for the tiniest child, Penny, carried by the biggest one, Sarah, the girls introduced themselves as they jumped off the bus, helped by Stan.

"Thank you for coming to our party," I replied to each in turn: Penny, Sarah, Rachel, Deborah, Brianna, Alycia.

Inside, it didn't take Pearl long to take me aside and fill me in. Mrs. Evans was not the biological mother of any of these children. She was the wife of Pastor Joshua Evans, preacher and proprietor of the House of the Lord African Methodist Episcopal Church, three-quarters of a mile west on Davey Wiggins Road. The three oldest girls were the pastor's own daughters.

"Their mother and their big sister got killed in a car wreck," Pearl whispered. "There's not any little girls in Houston smarter than the Evans girls. They go to a charter school that holds classes on Saturday morning and all summer long. Oh, they are little stars like you never saw."

## § § §

A few minutes later, as I was passing the sandwich tray, Juanita Evans said, "I saw Miss Pearl pulling you off to one side, so I guess you have been filled in about my family."

Was she hinting at a wish for a conversation more substantial than the usual party small talk? I wondered. Or, was she acknowledging Pearl's inclination to provide background?

"Yes, she did," I admitted, returning the ball to her court.

"Good. I hoped so. We can move on. So, please, tell me who you are and how you found yourself in this interesting building," Juanita said. "I've been so curious about it as I drive by."

I told her that Foster and I grew up together years ago and that he had asked me to join him in a business to be operated out of the tin building.

"He's a lawyer and I have a business of my own that I want to keep, so I'm not sure how this is going to work out. In fact, I'm not sure what he has in mind."

"Oh, now I recognize you," she said. "I do believe you are the person who filed a lawsuit against Harland Warren. You were on the news and in the newspaper. Oh, excuse me. I realize how crass that sounded."

I assured her I was not offended.

"I don't want to get off on the wrong foot. So I'll begin again. My name is Juanita Evans. Those are my girls. The older three girls are my stepdaughters. The smaller girls are foster children. I married Pastor Joshua Evans three years ago. In one ceremony, I went from being a single lady who had never been married to a pastor's wife with a ready-made family. Quite a leap."

"No boys?" This was a ladies-only tea party, so I wondered if any young men were back at the parsonage.

"My husband has a grown son, in the Army. We decided, reluctantly, not to take any boys into the home, not with so many female children. Well, we do care for abandoned male infants in emergencies. It's just, you see, I worked for many years, until my retirement, in juvenile probation. I learned in that profession that if you think you can save all the children, you might not be able to save any."

I said I could understand how they were protective of the little girls.

I told her that my son was in the Army, too.

"We'll add him to our prayer list," she said. "What is his name?"

"Galen Vaughn Junior," I replied. "He likes to be called G.J."

## § § §

The little ladies mixed with varying levels of poise with the elderly ladies. At the punch bowl, the girls formed a queue to be served, in reverse order of their size. They displayed elaborate good manners, almost as if they went to an old-fashioned tea party like this every Saturday afternoon. Each girl took one cookie and one finger sandwich, evidence of strict etiquette training.

The toddler Penny was the exception to the comportment standard. Being overwhelmed by so many old ladies intent on holding and kissing her, Penny wailed until big sister Sarah picked her up.

# Chapter Seven

As the pastor's wife and I were chatting, Foster's face appeared over her shoulder. She couldn't see him, but he and I were facing one another. Politely, he waited for a pause in the conversation before interrupting.

He asked Juanita if she would like to show me the church and where the Evans family lives.

"The girls are having fun. Stan and Pearl can watch them while I drive you two ladies down the road to the church. That would give you time to get acquainted."

When Juanita jumped at the offer, I jumped right in after her.

The church compound consisted of a brick sanctuary building, a fellowship hall, two wood-frame classroom buildings, and the Evans family's residence.

There were bookshelves along the walls in the fellowship hall, above the windows and in the classrooms. Everywhere. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Volumes of Shakespeare. Dictionaries, one an unabridged edition on a floor stand. An entire shelf of books by President Jimmy Carter. Reference books. Encyclopedia, some of them decades old, but probably still of some use, if only for the illustrations. I saw volumes on crime and sociology, perhaps from Juanita Evans' professional collection. Presidential biographies. A shelf of books on the civil rights movement. A Spanish/English dictionary.

After showing me through the church facilities, Juanita asked if I'd like to see the parsonage.

"It's the original family home. My husband's great-grandfather moved his family out here in 1918, away from the center of Houston, after the race riot. Are you familiar with that aspect of Houston history?"

Yes. I knew she was speaking of an insurrection of black soldiers during the First World War.

The black troops, based in New Mexico, were transferred to Camp Logan in Houston, where they suffered hostility and indignities at the hands of white people. After an uprising by the black soldiers was quelled, a number of them were tried. Some were hanged.

## § § §

"My husband's family history goes a lot further back than the Camp Logan tragedy, all the way to the Emancipation. They lived in the center of Houston, the Fourth Ward. Of course, Houston was a small city back then. Great-grandfather Evans was a butler for a white family. On Sunday, he was a preacher. He moved his family out of Houston, out here in the country. Six black families, or Negro families as they were described at the time, went in together and bought land, which they subdivided among themselves for truck farming. All over the South, black families fled cities if they could manage, after the race riot in Houston. They feared more reprisals from what was called, in racial code, 'the Houston situation'."

"Understandably."

What more could I say? Generations later, the Camp Logan riot remained excruciating history. For the pastor, it was his family's history.

"For years, the road out front was known as Evans Church Road. You can see the original name on old maps. For years, especially during the Great Depression, this was an isolated rural settlement."

"That's quite a lot of history," I said.

## § § §

The Evans parsonage was smaller and older than my ranch-style house, with only one bathroom.

Juanita apparently read my thoughts by the expression on my face.

"We don't all rise and shine at the same time. Since I'm retired, I take my turn after everybody else. But I must leave the bathroom door open because the little girls get upset if I shut the door and they can't see me. Some days, I have all three of them in there, hanging over the tub and all talking nonstop, while I try to bathe. I'm their mama, as far as they're concerned."

We peeked into the bedrooms, each one neat but crammed with chests and dressers and shelving.

"Sarah sleeps on the sofa bed in the living room, with Penny on the floor beside her on an air mattress. The trade-off for Sarah is that she can read or study after lights-out for the rest of the family. The truth is, Sarah is as much a mother to the little girls as I am. She has more experience."

I told her that I wasn't sure it took a village to raise a child, but that it certainly takes a family.

"We all take good care of the little three. Being foster children, they could be taken away should anything happen."

## § § §

I asked her if we could get ourselves on a first-name basis.

She hesitated, looking squarely at me. She took a deep breath. "That will be fine. Something tells me I need a female friend closer to my age than Miss Pearl, God love that woman. I'm Juanita."

"I'm Nina. I'm in the same boat as you, Juanita. I need a friend."

I followed her into the kitchen.

"We don't allow sodas or bottled water in the house, but I do indulge in fine teas and good coffee. Can I brew you a quick cup?"

I said I'd join her in whatever was her favorite beverage. Lucky for me, that turned out to be fulsome New Orleans-style coffee.

## § § §

Seated on the back porch of the parsonage, having compressed the preliminaries of forging a friendship, confidences flowed between us like fresh-brewed coffee.

Juanita told me she was struggling each day to fulfill expectations no one had articulated, but that she felt weighed down by.

And guilt. She said a burden of guilt was inescapable for her.

"I've never been able to tell anyone this before, but sometimes I'm choking on guilt. When I first met the Reverend Joshua Evans, he and his wife had come to the juvenile detention center with one of their church members. Joshua was this short, stocky black man, and his wife was a tiny little woman. He introduced himself and then her. He presented her as the love of his life. Just a friendly phrase to a stranger—not overblown. At first, I thought they were parents of the boy in custody. But no. They were there to support the grandmother of the detainee, an elderly lady who was trying to raise a violent, out-of-control boy."

Juanita told me how, over time, the Evanses showed up at juvenile detention again and again to support other families in crisis.

"Nina, here's what gnaws at my soul almost every day. I'd see how tender and protective he was toward people, but especially his wife, and I'd fantasize how it would be to have a man like that in my own life. I had a satisfying life at the time, except for job stress. I had a good paycheck. The big church where I was a member offered group activities. But at night, almost every night, I would lie awake for a while, wondering what it would be like to reach across and touch a man. I wasn't one of those women hysterical about the biological clock. I could have adopted a child easily. It wasn't children I craved. I yearned to have a good husband."

She took a deep breath. I didn't say anything. I knew there was more to come.

"When I heard that she'd died in a car wreck, my first thought was that she was out of the picture. I've never confessed this to anyone. It was an instant, just an instant, before my humanity re-emerged and I felt the grief I knew Joshua and his children and his tight-knit church body were suffering."

## § § §

I told Juanita that most women want a man with those qualities she saw in Joshua Evans.

"I think any woman in your situation would have had a fleeting moment of recognition of his change in status with his wife deceased. It wasn't sinful for you to be aware that he had become a widower."

She still wasn't done.

"A sudden widower, and the finest man I had ever met, by far. He was so brave, and he loved her so much. They grew up here in the community. They were sweethearts from childhood. You know that old saying? About two hearts that beat as one? Sometimes, lying in bed at night, I sense that he's still communing with her, in his heart."

I took Juanita's hands in mine. I didn't plan a speech. I just opened my mouth and listened to what came out.

"Maybe she's watching over her family. Isn't that what they need to believe? That after that awful wreck, she's looking down on them with spiritual love?"

Mercy. I wanted to help her with her burden of guilt, but I didn't have any words left to express how I felt. I wanted to warn Juanita not to allow her guilt feelings to drive a wedge between her and her husband, but since I lacked elegant words, I hugged her instead.

"It's hard to comfort the girls. If I say I'm sorry for their losing their mother, the paradox is there. Their loss was my gain. I wouldn't be married to their father if they had not lost their mother."

She rushed on. "The little ones, though. They're as much mine as they are his... with the foster children, I don't have the usurper guilt."

I told her that I lacked the skill to say anything profound, but that I could be a friend who would listen.

The truth was, I couldn't bear to hear her groping for words to describe her complicated feelings.

I was relieved when the confession ended, and she went back to telling me about Evans family history.

"Back when Joshua's grandfather was a boy, this community was working-class black folk. They chartered their own school district, River Forest. The men had jobs at the port or pipe yards or on one of the railroads. The families all had two or three acres to grow vegetables and raise chickens and rabbits. It suited family life. Their school district was small but excellent. Those were the harsh days of segregation, but this was an insular settlement then, and safe. Virtually all homes had a father or a father figure."

She paused to take a sip of coffee.

"Then Stan Deleon's father came along and opened a drive-in theater down the road where the trailer park is now. He screened dirty movies. He put up three big movie screens. Imagine what it was like for the community when those big screens started showing smut when the sun went down. Sex in the sky right outside. Back then, they didn't have air-conditioning. Windows were kept open for ventilation. Imagine. At intermission, he had strippers performing. Anybody in the community who complained got threatened or attacked, in their own homes—at night."

"Do you and Joshua ever discuss those times?" I was as curious about Deleon family history as about Evans family history.

"Not much," she said. "Joshua doesn't deny the past, but he doesn't like to dwell on it. Most of what I know comes from the oldsters who lived through it. When I bring it up, Joshua tells me that old man Deleon is answering to God for his sins."

Amen to that, I thought.

## § § §

She asked me if she could talk some more about her present-day family problem.

I said yes.

"I'm becoming self-obsessed. I spend too much time dwelling on how uncomfortable I feel, occupying her place. I wouldn't be here **...** "

"No, no. No more Juanita. No more of that."

If she could not overcome her feeling of guilt at being alive and married to Joshua, then Juanita needed to talk to a bona fide counselor, somebody with credentials, not me. But I did tell her that, as her friend, I understood. It wasn't a stretch for me to imagine being in her situation.

Silence descended on us for a moment, but it was a companionable pause in the conversation, not an awkward one.

## § § §

Juanita retrieved a plate of cookies from the fridge and put it on the table between us. I knew, from the irregular shapes and sizes, that the cookies were rolled by the littlest girls.

"These cookies look like a group project."

"Yes, ma'am. See if you can tell which one is supposed to be a bunny and which one a dinosaur."

I was relieved that Juanita's mood had brightened.

"You must have good times, Juanita. They're all adorable girls, and they need you so much."

"Of course they do, especially the babies. Maybe the problem is that he and I didn't have much courtship or transition time. I parachuted into the Evans clan. It's a good analogy to say that I jumped in. Maybe I was pushy. Demographics weren't favorable to me, being an African American woman past age forty. I knew the statistics. I worked with statistics. A white woman like yourself might not think about..."

Abruptly, Juanita stopped speaking. She looked at me strangely. I figured I knew why: my sudden smile.

"You'll have to excuse the look on my face if I appear to be laughing," I said. "It's not about what you were saying. Oh, maybe it was. But you must have forgotten the part where my ex-husband went to federal prison."

We looked into one another's wide-open eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"He's sorrier," I said, before cracking up at that hearing myself use that corny punch line.

Soon, Juanita was howling along with me.

It took a while, but when our laughter tapered off, Juanita changed the subject. She asked me about Foster.

"Speaking of men, are you and Foster Adamson planning to take your relationship to another dimension?"

"No. He and I are friends." Rather than leaving it at that terse answer, I felt an urge to clarify. "Our relationship has been on the same level for years. It wasn't always so. I was so besotted over Foster when we were kids that I scared him. He liked to spend time with me, while I had a crush on him that fueled itself into an emotional bonfire. I speak of it as a crush, but deep down I know that I was obsessed. Not in a healthy way, but definitely I was in love with Foster, worshipfully. I wrote him poems. I waited hours on the sidewalk in front of his house to see him when he came home. I was convinced that if I never gave up, I could, by force of will, cause Foster to return my devotion. All I did was rattle him. His mother had to ask mine to make me stop pestering him."

"Weren't you embarrassed?"

"It was embarrassing for Foster, for his parents, for my parents, for everyone except me. See, Juanita, I didn't care what anyone else thought. That's why, when I say that he and I are friends, it is true, but that means a whole lot more than what most people mean when they say they're friends with someone. My friendship with Foster is complicated by our back story."

"He's so good-looking and sophisticated. It's hard to imagine Foster Adamson as a teenage boy. But I can picture him trying to deal with a love struck girl without being cruel." She nodded, indicating she understood.

"He was bewildered by how I acted. I think he felt something was wrong with him because he was the object of my craziness. Since he didn't reciprocate my obsession, he was far too proper to be flattered by it. But I wasn't the only girl who acted that way when it came to him. I was just the one with the most conspicuous symptoms. The man you see is what he was like as a boy. Cool, brainy, polite, and popular. Adults liked Foster, too."

"What happened? You obviously got on with life. I mean **...** you married **...** what happened?"

"Foster went out of town to college. I didn't. I wrote. He didn't answer. I decided to pretend he was dead. I went to my uncle's funeral but pretended it was Foster. I did things like that for a couple of years until finally the fire was snuffed out."

"How about now?"

I told her that while Foster never pours out his heart to me, he likes to listen. "I tell him everything–doubts, fears, schemes, dreams, high crimes and misdemeanors. My role is to be his friend, somebody to go places with. Old reliable, that's who I've become."

What I didn't tell her, was that I was beginning to suspect that Foster had grown nostalgic for the crazy girl I used to be.

"What about you and Mr. Vaughn?"

How did I feel about my inmate ex-husband? That was the same question I was asked by reporters, from the tabloids to the networks, while Galen Vaughn was on trial. Local Houston reporters who knew me professionally had been uncomfortable about their assignment, but they had to ask. None of them got the sound bite their editors sent them for, because, back then, when Galen's trial was under way, I wouldn't comment.

This conversation was different. Years had passed since the trial. Juanita was not pushing a microphone in my face. This was girl talk, and I was relishing it.

"Galen? Juanita, girl, let me tell you. Galen was hot and crazy and unable to stick to anything. I paid a high price for the ticket, but the ride on the Galen Vaughn roller coaster was madcap fun at times. It was only the sudden stop at the bottom, when the ride left the tracks, that hurt."

## § § §

I wondered, afterward, whether my tête-à-tête with Juanita had been Foster's idea or Stan's idea. One of them had set it up. She needed a friend from outside the tight confines of the little church and her ready-made family. She had stepped out of the life she knew and into the life Pastor Evans had already built with his dead sweetheart.

I needed a close friend, too: another female to trust and confide in, not a relative and not a client and not a curious neighbor.

Had Foster figured this out before I did? Was Stan Deleon in on it?

## § § §

Back at the tea party, as the ladies, young and old, bid their farewells, Foster tied balloons around each wrist.

Stan's biddies left with their take-home food.

Foster improvised party favors for the young ladies from the supply cabinet–erasers, envelopes, paper clips, adhesive address labels.

Pearl Deleon, the first to arrive, was the last to leave. She insisted on helping us clean up. That included cleaning the floors and dusting the flat surfaces. She hauled a bag of trash for the Magnolia Gardens dumpster when she left.

## § § §

With our guests gone, Foster and I sat sipping wine and reflecting on our kickoff party. I challenged him. "So, thumbs up or thumbs down?"

"I had more fun than I can remember, if you must know. I'll thank you not to say you told me so."

"What about that stepmother of Stan's? Isn't she a character?"

Foster said there was a lot he didn't know about Stan's family history. He confessed to being curious about it. What he did know was that Stan was taking good care of his stepmother because she took care of his no-good, undeserving father until the day he died.

"I got a little insight into the life and times of Stan's father," I said.

"If you did, you'll have an inkling as to why Stan sees to it that Pearl wants for nothing. She rules as the dowager queen of that place over there. She runs the washateria and she polices the grounds. She's also social worker—makes certain her neighbors are taking their medicine and getting enough to eat."

I said I'd like to get to know Pearl better, that she was interesting.

"Same here," he said. "But go easy with the curiosity. If Stan ever wants you to know more, he'll draw back the curtain. Until then, be mindful that here in Hole in the Wall, people don't like to dwell on the events of their past."

"Juanita Evans does," I said.

"Maybe she's a natural-born talker, like somebody else I know," he said with a grin.

# Chapter Eight

If it's true that a person is what the person does, Juanita had changed her identity in a heartbeat. Nothing in her life was the same from the day she wed Joshua Evans: not domicile, not marital status, not church membership. Not even her work, because she retired from the Juvenile Probation Department to assume the role of pastor's wife.

Sensitivity and discretion were essential in the new role in life she was creating: foster mother, stepmother, and second wife.

By contrast, discretion in my line of work was a disadvantage. My stock-in-trade was pushing metaphorical envelopes.

I preferred to think of my calling as being a "re-purposer" or a re-arranger, or scene changer.

I'd been a re-arranger since the first time a Sunday school teacher left me unattended and I re-arranged the bulletin board and the tiny chairs. The result looked okay in my five-year-old's judgment, but not to the teacher. I remember her scolding, and my bewilderment. I didn't think I'd done anything wrong by re-arranging the little chairs from a semi-circle into a formation like a choo-choo, one behind the other. Since I didn't think I'd "torn up the display" on the bulletin board, in fact believed my version was prettier, I refused to say I was sorry for being naughty.

But I did learn from the experience that sometimes it's best to think before you start re-arranging things.

That was why I never charged a fee for an initial consultation; that's when I could find out if the prospective client and I had the same vision. Could I improve a situation through creative ideas?

Also, that was how I could find out whether they could afford to hire me.

My clients were people who needed to have their small businesses survive from one month to the next. They could not afford to fail because they had put everything into their businesses, including their life savings and their credit rating. Often, family members were their investors. My mission was to help them not only survive, but grow.

As they juggled each day's receipts, the month's expenses, and the quarterly report, they had to make costs come in a little lower than sales. What I got paid to do was to help them sell more, to see around corners and to outsell their competitors.

When asked how I got started in my line of work, I would give a burnished version of how it happened. In that telling, my ex-husband saw a spark in me and encouraged me to go into business for myself.

The not-so-rosy reality was that I got started by having to clean up after my ex-husband, Galen. During our marriage, as he careened from one business to another, diminishing his credibility each time he bombed, he would call on me to help him with a cover story or a way out of a contract or a quick fix for sagging revenues. His messes became my clean-up challenges.

Ultimately, Nina Vaughn and Associates emerged from the shambles of my ex-husband's disastrously manic ambitions.

By whichever version, I became indebted to him because I loved what he made me learn how to do.

I also owe to Galen my nose for politics. Before he became a federal inmate, he taught me about getting laws passed (his two runs at the Texas Legislature), lobbying (for a tribe of casino operators wanting to move into Texas), and fund-raising (a short-lived consulting enterprise).

Galen did not like to do tedious work, or to sweat the details. That meant he could not recognize what happens when customers are dissatisfied. Whenever dissatisfied customers or investors showed up, I would lecture Galen about the necessity for taking responsibility for what happened to customers and investors. I was talking to myself, because he did not listen.

"Rave on, Nina Vaughn," was his favorite line for getting me to shut up.

Then came Galen's indictment for securities fraud. I decided, or it was pointed out to me by friends, that if I could help clean up the mess left by Galen's follies, then I could surely help people who were dedicated to their enterprises, people who worked hard and took the advice they paid me for.

I could "rave on" and get paid for it.

That was the up side of my marriage to a narcissist.

Most of my clients got value for the fees I charged because I worked so hard on their behalf. With time, I became a brand. If Nina Vaughn couldn't help you sell meals or merchandise or your services, then nobody in Houston could. That was the buzz about my work, and it was usually buzz you could take to the bank.

## § § §

So, shortly after our tea party, I was caught flat-footed when I realized my clients were dumping me. They were being invited to participate in a nonprofit economic development program. The program offered them "marketing support" for their businesses, at no cost to them.

They were being offered the same help, for free, that I charged money to provide.

"Harland Warren is behind this. He's enticing your clientele, making them think they can get by without you," Foster said. "He's got as much PR muscle on his payroll as he has tough guys."

"Why didn't you warn me? I told you I don't want to give up Nina Vaughn and Associates."

"I said it was okay with me if you kept your business. I did not say Harland was going to let you go on with your happy life and keep your business. I told you he is vindictive. Here's your proof."

# Chapter Nine

Backing out of my garage at the crack of dawn, I spied what looked like a mound in the middle of my front yard. I inched a few feet farther down the drive until my headlights lit the mound, as high as the top of the car.

It was my landscaping.

The mound was my shrubs, bushes and flowers. Hundreds of hours of work uprooted. My mailbox was there, too, pulled out of the ground and tossed on the heap.

Easing up on the brake, I let the car glide into the street. I shifted into drive and turned off the lights, inching forward in near darkness.

As I turned the corner at the end of my block, I heard the rasp of something being dragged.

I didn't stop. I kept driving until I got to a 24-hour convenience store. Before jumping out to look under the car, I made eye contact with the attendant; she would be an eyewitness if anything befell me.

I crouched and looked under the car.

Hanging in the under-carriage was a basket of my cactus orchids. I couldn't reach far enough under the car to rescue the delicate red blossoms. They were doomed to be dragged until they came loose. All that tender care from me and now they would be horticultural road kill.

Whoever destroyed my landscaping had purposely placed the basket in the driveway for me to run over.

The vandals might have been kids, but I thought not. Whoever destroyed my landscaping conveyed a personal message. That gave me a case of the heebie-jeebies. I waved at the woman behind the bullet-proof window.

I drove through residential streets for a while, not wanting to get on a freeway in the dark. After almost an hour, I was heading east into a blazing sunrise, doing 73 on 610-North, hemmed on four sides by tractor trailers. My purse lay on the floor on the passenger side, too far for me to grab. I clinched my jaw and squinted.

If the sun didn't blind me before I could make it, I'd stop for sustenance at Gil's Hiway Grill. I knew it would be open at that hour because, out of force of habit, I'd noted Gil's hours of operation when Foster took me there.

Gil's served a truck-stop-style breakfast, so I ordered an armload of pancakes, Texas toast and coffees, to go.

## § § §

Noting his Mercedes parked on the slab beneath the tin house, I knew Foster was there.

So was Stan, I discovered upon entering.

Folding tables were set up all over the big room, laden with maps and plastic-bound documents. Both guys were red-eyed. I figured they'd been there all night.

They didn't let my arrival interrupt what they were doing. Stan accepted a coffee but didn't dose it with condiment.

"Morning glory," Foster said. "Take a seat." Recognizing his implied (but not uttered) "but please don't talk," I plopped on the floor and leaned against a wall.

"The little bureaucratic weasel recorded any business with a sign, but not much else," Stan said. "Hell. We asked for a map with residences, but all he comes up with is a windshield survey. So that's what our taxes pay for? First, they see what's going on in your neck of the woods, and then they charge you for telling you what they think is wrong with the way you and your neighbors live. That's what they call city planning."

Foster kept quiet. He watched Stan, waiting, seeming to know that Stan hadn't wound down yet.

Stan inhaled, muttered a cuss word, and forged on.

"Not only does this so-called report not identify residences, the bureaucratic squirrel missed a lot of so-called economic activity. Here. Look. He missed these two game parlors because he didn't come out here on Saturday night when the road is jammed with cars and there is a lot of quote economic activity unquote going on. It may not be legal activity, but it damn sure is economic activity. You got crowds and big money on Saturday night. That's economic activity. Look what else he missed. There's these three fabricating shops, here and here and here," he said, thumping the map.

"They got no signs so the EPA don't find them. Behind each one, there's a dwelling. And this guy here repairs boat trailers and doesn't do anything illegal except refuse to collect sales tax. Underground economy, tons of it. Tens of thousands of dollars change hands out here weekly. Economic activity out the wazoo. Dwellings without occupancy permits, dozens of them. Some of these folks got septic systems and water wells that nobody knows about."

Foster took the floor. He'd politely waited till Stan wound down.

"You're right. This survey is worthless. But in our situation, Stan, we better forget about the unlawful activity and just focus on where people are in residence. The clandestine illegal stuff would give them a political stick to beat us with."

"Who'd beat us? What politics?" It was time I forced them to notice me. I wanted to be included in the discussion.

"I am reporting to work. Should I have called first?"

Foster grinned. "Okay. Hop up so you can see. Welcome to freshman orientation. Stan and I are resistance fighters, trying to figure out what the enemy is up to, and how to minimize casualties. And how cosmic is this? The forces of evil are under the command of your financial benefactor, old Harland Warren himself. You like to say you've been to the rodeo lots of times, but you won't believe what's happening... or what we suspect he's trying to pull."

## § § §

It took them quite a while to describe the conspiracy of their suspicions. It was the oft-told story of the powerful seizing something they didn't own–yet.

The concept the two guys offered was easy for me to follow. The details took longer to absorb: politics, sabotage, destruction and callous disregard for collateral damage.

The scale and arrogance of it made my head pound. The evil scheme was audacious.

"The reverend down the road, you met his wife and children, is the one who supplied the critical clue," Foster said. "Let me put it a different way. I was trying to connect the dots but some dots were invisible. When I got title to this place, I knew it was built as the prototype for a gated community of tin structures. I knew the buildings were designed for use as residences with professional space. I also knew that the gated community was a component of an even bigger development plan."

I shook my head to register disdain for the idea of a colony of ugly tin houses on an ugly road. Foster smiled and nodded, an acknowledgment of my known distaste. He continued.

"The recession killed the big scheme. The foreign investors took a hard-nosed look at the motley assortment of property owners and threw up their hands. The venture guys said it would tie up too much capital to block up enough land for what they wanted to create."

"A major resort destination, like Vegas," Stan piped up. "They wanted to develop the biggest thing between Orlando and Anaheim, with casinos, hotels, golf courses, and a race track."

Foster took it from there.

"But we think, Stan and I think, we're fairly certain, that a Houston developer decided to go ahead with the plan to block up vast expanses of property after the foreign financiers turned tail. We think the local boy came up with a way to acquire all the land, on the cheap, by buying it from the government. Ready for the details?"

## § § §

No, I was not ready for any more details. I was ready for some Texas toast. My head was spinning. I wanted to step outside and scream. The day was off to a hellacious start, which had the effect of making me feel hungry.

But I let Foster and Stan continue putting the suspected conspiracy into focus.

Foster said the key to how the land would get blocked up came from Pastor Joshua Evans.

It involved illegal dumping to cause flooding. A fellow driver at the Solid Waste Department asked the pastor how much he would charge to drop a few loads of heavy trash–furniture, refrigerators, tree limbs–in certain storm drain openings, instead of taking that debris to the landfill.

Alarmed and suspicious, the pastor told Stan about it, and Stan told Foster. The outline of a conspiracy to sabotage the drainage system, precipitating flooding, emerged.

Why? Who would benefit?

In the last few days, Foster had solved the mystery. The man-made flood would result in government condemnations of property. The ultimate phase of the land-grab would be political: take the flooded land off the government's hands and re-develop it, creating a huge resort and lake.

"Show her the maps you did, man," Stan said.

Foster flattened a rolled-up map.

"This is the district where we are. I traced the boundaries with a red pencil."

The red line suggested the shape of a dumbbell. The handle was Davey Wiggins Road, connecting two areas about the same size.

"This area is Somerset. Middle class. It's bounded by the airport, this golf course, and the San Jacinto River," Foster said. "Then, over here, the red line follows the River Forest School District boundaries. It's older and minority. The two areas have nothing in common except that Davey Wiggins Road connects them. They vote for the same state rep."

"The district reminds me of a hand weight," I said.

"Pretty close. They had to draw it this way to balance demographic representation. Make the feds happy. The main thing to remember about this district at the moment is that the legislative seat is up for grabs," Foster said.

"Look at this, Nina. This will keep you awake at nights," Stan said, as he unrolled a huge map, at least four feet by six feet.

"This is a watershed map. Every snapshot we taped to this map shows the flooding in that spot in 2001 during Allison. Every X is a spot we think they plan to clog with debris. Foster used blue marker to show how high the flood water would be if the bayous overflow their banks if we get four inches of rain in twelve hours, if those blocked conduits don't carry off the rainwater."

On the map, the stretch of Davey Wiggins Road where we were at the moment was colored solid blue. It would go under.

"With those ditches full, water would start backing up to the buildings," Stan said. "Pearl's trailer might float away like a barge. All the trailers would. Not much would be left on my property after the flood except maybe the fence."

Stan put away that map as Foster unrolled another one.

"This one is the same watershed map, but this copy is marked to show what would happen with twice as much rain in twenty-four hours," Foster said. "Everything in purple would be under at least six feet of water. The adhesive dots are dwellings. I'm sure there are more, but some places where people live were never permitted. Nobody knows where all the residences are."

This map looked like a huge purple lake, colored in neat strokes by Foster's hand.

"Notice anything?" he asked.

"The Old Beaumont Highway is under water," I said. "The railroad tracks, too."

"Right. And the landfill is purple, too. It would be breached," Foster said. "This entire area would be a mammoth toxic drowning pool if eight inches of rain fell in the space of twelve hours. You've got four bayous draining into one low-lying area. If it happened during the night, sleeping people would be trapped and not know it, especially if San Jacinto River were to crest."

## § § §

"Only one guy that I know about is a big enough megalomaniac to come up with this. It's the same thing he's been doing for years: Destroy, condemn, acquire. He's a master of extortion, civic extortion. Only with this scheme, the catastrophe could be on a Hurricane Katrina scale."

Both men looked at me, waiting.

I was slow to react. I didn't want to accept their theory of the crime-to-be. I kept staring at Foster's worst-case map, the one with the purple lake and the colored dots.

"How is anybody be crazy enough to deliberately create a Katrina-type disaster?"

"Whoa," Foster said. "It's not a conspiracy to drown anybody. It's a conspiracy to obtain vast expanses of land on the cheap. The danger to people is incidental. But the worse the disaster, the less desirable the flooded land becomes. Cheaper. Somebody always benefits from natural disasters. With disaster, there's opportunity. Always. So this is a plan to make a disaster happen, in tandem with a natural occurrence."

"Ma'am, this may sound crazy, and we sure can't prove it, but I agree with Foster that a massive criminal conspiracy is under way."

"Why don't you..."

Foster didn't let me finish.

"If you're thinking we should go to law enforcement, maybe to the F.B.I. or the Texas Rangers, hold on. Stan and I are almost certain about the conspiracy, but what convinced us is the sum of what he knows plus what I know plus what Joshua Evans knows. But what we three guys know, plus these mapping projections, won't hold up as proof. That's because nothing has happened. Anyway, the driver who solicited Joshua Evans would lie if questioned."

Stan picked up telling me their theory.

"Right now, the only people who believe this conspiracy is real are Foster, myself, and Joshua Evans. Maybe you, if we've convinced you. And Joshua Evans said he would tell his wife, so maybe she's a become a believer at this point. So that would make five people who know, except the ones in on the conspiracy. But figuring out there's a conspiracy under way can be life threatening if you decide to act. A guy I know was a kid in Tehran during the revolution. From their apartment, his family could see when people below walked into a sniper's ambush. They could see an ambush was about to happen, but they knew not to call out a warning to the person about to be shot. If they called out a warning from their window, the sniper would turn around and fire into their apartment. My point is that it's dangerous to call out a warning when there may be a sniper on the roof."

Stan put his hands on my shoulders.

"Ma'am, we can't prove a thing right now. I don't think we can ever prove the conspiracy in advance. So we've got to stop it without being seen by the sniper on the rooftop."

"Do you see the danger now?" Foster asked. "Are you getting it?"

"You mean, do I think somebody might kill us? I'm having trouble with it, but I'm not in total denial."

I suggested we eat.

## § § §

After breakfast, Foster told a hair-raising story I'd never heard before. As he told it, I thought about the vandalism back at my house.

Years back, Harland Warren wanted to block up several square blocks of property near downtown Houston. The neighborhood was old and had too many noisy bars, but the buildings appealed to renters, especially young people, because of spacious rooms and proximity to colleges and jobs.

Foster knew about the real-estate play Harland was ramming through because a client of his was being strong-armed to sell some property. The offer was low-ball. Foster had a clerk in his office, Dee Dee, who rented from the client. She called Foster at home one night, hysterical. She had just hung up from an anonymous call.

A man's voice on the line said "This is a warning. To stay alive, be sure to stay away from your place tomorrow. Do not stay home for any reason."

Following Foster's instructions, Dee Dee left with her dog and spent the night with a friend. By five o'clock the next afternoon, her apartment building and four adjacent ones had burned to the ground. No humans died, but several house pets were incinerated.

Horrific as this story was, I had no doubt that it was true. Foster did not repeat rumors. He told less than he knew, never more than what he knew to be true.

At Foster's insistence, Dee Dee moved out of Houston without ever reporting the threat she got the day before the arson fire. He financed Dee Dee's fresh start somewhere else.

"I do not intend to relive that kind of complicity this time," Foster said.

"Complicity?" I was puzzled. "How could you have been complicit?"

"I didn't do anything to stop him. He ended up with the property he wanted, cheaply, and through violence and extortion. I did nothing. I told a victim of terror to be silent. Silence is complicity. You know that, Nina."

"We have a chance to stop whoever it is, probably him, before people get hurt," Stan said. "This time, he's got a lot of hurdles besides just hiring a guy with a gas can and a lighter. We've just got to get out in front of this conspiracy."

"This thing is so massive, maybe we can do something to make it collapse under its own weight," Foster said.

## § § §

By the time I finally remembered to tell them about my yard being vandalized, they had me believing their conspiracy theory was more than theory. My vandalism shocker fit into the puzzle

I agreed not to return to my house until we knew it wasn't dangerous.

I'd board with Pearl, we decided.

# Chapter Ten

"Their scheme won't work without several of his puppets holding office," Foster said. "He needs to get control of some jurisdiction with authority to collect taxes. That's why we've got to interfere in politics by throwing so much sunshine around that it will seem impossible to do."

"And we can't look like we know what's cooking," Stan said. "We can't stop rain from inundating us. We probably can't stop the sabotage dumping. But maybe, like Foster says, we can make the scheme too complicated for him politically."

It was possible, Foster insisted, that Harland Warren's scheme might include taking control of River Forest ISD, perhaps making it a component of his master plan by promising reform and new residential development. Foster insisted we go observe.

Once academically rigorous, the River Forest School District had become a cookie jar for its self-perpetuating board and administrators, and their relatives. Year after year, scandal after scandal erupted, always over missing money, neglected students, blatant nepotism and corruption. With fewer than 10,000 students, the district was facing takeover by the state authorities

Attending a board meeting of the River Forest School District seemed a wimpy first step to foil the flood plot, but Stan and Foster insisted it was an essential first step. The school district was under control of a cabal of profiteers, headed by a thug. The school board members were related to one another and voted unanimously in their public meetings.

The corruption was no secret, but we didn't know who the enforcers might be. Foster said we needed to find out who the prayers were in the neighborhood. We might even discover that we had potential allies among the taxpayers.

We were going to a board meeting.

In the past, I'd done this type of work for Foster, observing at meetings and trials to take notes for his case files. His law firm paid me well for my service. That didn't mean I enjoyed the work. Meetings are onerous, and sitting still is hard on the kidneys. I did it back then because I needed money.

Oh, how I hoped the phony school board meeting this night would be livelier than those past ordeals.

Of course, for me there would be an upside the meeting. I would finally meet the talked-about Joshua Evans.

He had signed up to address the River Forest School Board, listing as his topic why the school district should combine its two under-attended middle schools to save money for the taxpayers.

## § § §

Stan briefed me in Pearl's kitchen the day of the school board meeting. We were at Pearl's kitchen table.

"You need to be patient with Foster today, when you get over there to go to work. Cut him some slack. He got a shock last night. Rather, Pearl one-upped him, without a second thought."

"Pearl? Why would she try to upstage Foster? She thinks Foster's wonderful."

"Oh, she wasn't trying to. What happened is that she found a little map enclosed with the water bill from the city while she and I were paying bills last night. Little bitty map on a brochure enclosed mailed with the bill. But the brochure or whatever you call it showed where the water for Houston comes from. She'd been hearing us talk about flooding and sabotage, so she called him, after you were sound asleep. Said she needed to tell him something. He came over and she showed him."

The night before I never heard a thing. I never knew Foster was in the trailer with Pearl and me.

"So, what was on the map?"

"Lake Houston. You know, where most of the drinking water comes from. She showed him how the entire water supply could be contaminated if runoff..."

"The water supply for the entire city of Houston?"

"Maybe. Pearl showed Foster the water-bill map and pointed out the low-lying spots close to the river, something he hadn't picked up on."

"But Harland couldn't possibly gain if the water supply was contaminated. He's got property all over Houston."

"I'm just telling you what happened last night, okay. Foster is mad at himself for not noticing that possibility. I think it got to him that Pearl understood the significance of something that he overlooked."

"But don't you think Harland Warren would think it through before sabotaging the whole metro area?"

"Maybe not. Like Foster said, what's Harland going to do? Hire a team of hydrologists to tell him how not to engineer a flood? Do an environmental impact study? So, like I'm trying to get across, you should cut him some slack today. He's feeling like a turkey."

"Thanks for the warning. I'll stay out of sight." Besides scaring Foster, Pearl's observation probably hurt his pride, since he had overlooked the threat to Houston's water supply.

"Well, as the cliché goes, the plot thickens," Stan said.

"But I need to tell you about tonight, the school board meeting, too. Here's the deal. Couple of times a year, Joshua goes before the school board with comments. He feels it's his duty to get his remarks into the record, if he can manage it. He's under no illusion that anyone pays him heed. Tonight, he's going to propose an audit of the school district's finances, as well as the combining of the middle schools. What I mean is, he signed up to speak about combining the schools, but he's going to surprise them when he makes the audit proposal."

"These are some real nasty folks, that school board," Pearl yelled from the living room.

Stan yelled back "Right, Pearl."

He lowered his voice back to normal.

"Joshua's impossible to intimidate. He says the Lord is his shepherd in the presence of his enemies. And enemies that man has made. He's stirred up a hornet's nest. Tonight's allegedly a public meeting. Legally, they are required to hold a public meeting once a month, but they rehearse everything in advance, so the public meeting tonight is strictly a show. They don't bother with records or transcripts. But there'll be a reporter from the Chronicle present tonight. That's why Joshua signed up to speak. We watch. See if the pickpockets that call themselves board members enact anything revealing, like voting sell off district assets for cents on the dollar."

## § § §

I headed out from the trailer for a day in the office, scanning emails, writing copy and talking to clients.

The tin house now had office equipment and kitchen appliances–a microwave, refrigerator with icemaker, electric wok and grill, and coffee maker. It was a fully functional business office, with all the Class A amenities. But with an array of plats, maps, blueprints and aerial photos, it resembled a museum with boring exhibits.

My office was a space intended by the builder to serve as a walk-in closet. With shelves on all walls, I had plenty of storage, but no natural light. It was also the safest place in the tin house. It was now our panic room.

## § § §

That evening, when Stan came for me, I hardly recognized him. He was wearing khaki trousers, a dress shirt, and loafers–what would pass muster as business casual in a downtown office. He wasn't wearing a cap, so I saw that his sparse gray hair was burr cut in the style favored by hipsters as they go bald.

He, Pearl and I were attending as three concerned residents from Magnolia Gardens, which was one of the biggest tax-paying accounts in the River Forest School District.

## § § §

Upon arriving, we seated ourselves in an empty row in the middle of auditorium. The pastor and Juanita were already seated on the first row. From behind, their body language said they were a united force, and ready for the meeting to begin. We did not acknowledge them, nor they us.

Presently, to my wondering eyes appeared another party of white folks, four of the trailer-park ladies together with one down-market gent. He had on flip-flops, a gimme cap and jeans. His shirt tail was out. Had I not recognized the fine fabric of his custom-tailored shirt, I might not have known that man was Foster.

Like most public meetings, this one did not start at the posted time of 7:30.

Pearl, seated between Stan and me, patted my hand. "Don't be afraid of any rough stuff," she said. "I've got my pistol in my purse in case anything gets out of hand."

Oh, great. The signs on the front doors of the building that said Possession of Firearms in This Building Is a Felony. But heck. So much illegality had taken place in this building I decided not to worry about Pearl's law breaking. On the way in, I spotted a metal detector, but no one was staffing it. It hit me that Pearl was probably not the only person in this auditorium who was packing heat.

## § § §

It was 7:45. The meeting had not started but the first politico arrived to work the audience.

At 31, Marco Ruiz was making his third run at a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. He won Democratic primary for the vacant seat months earlier. At the state-rep level, as I knew from my ex-husband's attempts at being elected, candidates are drawn to public meetings.

In his first campaign, Marco wanted a client of mine to host a fund-raiser. I advised the client to do it, but to handle all the money himself. It was my standard advice to every client about political fundraisers: Host the fundraiser, collect the proceeds, count the money and be sure you document everything. If anyone donates cash, photocopy the bills. Don't let anyone else get their hands on the money except the official campaign treasurer. When it comes to politics, you never know who's operating a hidden cell phone.

My client's fundraiser for Marco netted about four hundred dollars for his campaign: not bad considering he was one of five candidates in that primary. The client also reported the cost of the chalupas, beer and wine as in-kind contributions.

The client got good exposure that resulted in new customers. I got a nice note from my client that said "Viva Nina Vaughn."

While waiting for this school-board meeting to start, I watched as row by row, Marco worked the room. He shook hands with Foster and the ladies in his party, then crossed the aisle to shake hands with Pearl, Stan and me.

Me, he recognized. "Nina Vaughn, what a surprise. What are you doing here?"

"I asked her to come," Pearl replied tartly, rescuing me from having to contrive a fib.

## § § §

Marco Ruiz, I was sure, did not reside in this legislative district. But residency was not a legal requirement to file for office. He'd run and lost in two other districts before now. If he won this seat in November, I was sure, he would move into Somerset. Residency was a requirement for holding office, but not for seeking .

If he didn't win this time, I figured he'd pop up in a future race.

Marco was ambitious. His wardrobe had improved in the two years since our last encounter. Back then, he had been chasing affluence. Now, he was apparently closing in on it.

Almost as if she had been purposely tailing Marco, Kimba Brown, his Republican opponent, made her entrance. With my focus on the conspiracy and my lifestyle on Davey Wiggins Road, I had forgotten about her rather startling candidacy.

I was fond of Kimba, upon whom nature had bestowed striking physical beauty and grace. Her desire to please was sincere, and she was willing to expend the effort required to become a star in any possible galaxy. Kimba's resume began with the job title Power Dancer for Houston Rockets. In short order, she became an on-camera personality on local television. During her short-lived morning show, I had no trouble booking my clients for appearances on her show.

It was easy to like this beautiful young woman.

Alas, it was hard to underestimate Kimba, for in addition to being earnest she was dumb as dirt. Being talkative as well as slow on the uptake rendered Kimba too risky for television. She believed everything she heard, and tended to repeat faux history and gossip with no sense of what she was saying. For station management, Kimba was a gorgeous loose cannon. Ere long, Kimba and her show left the air.

The folks arriving for the board meeting swiveled as they recognized her. They watched the door, curious to see if Bobby Brown, the former NBA star who was her husband, had come with her.

To their disappointment, this was not to be celebrity night. No one except an ordinary-looking woman of about my age, carrying a briefcase and a stack of handouts, followed Kimba into the auditorium. "Campaign manager," I whispered to Pearl and Stan.

Pearl elbowed me and whispered "No. Stan says that's an off-duty lady cop working security for Bobby Brown's wife."

Since I preferred to be incognito this evening, it would have been better had I worn a cap like Foster's. Without a disguise, Kimba recognized me.

"Oh, Nina. Hello. I'm running for state representative. I'd sure appreciate your vote."

"I know. I read about it. Good luck, Kimba."

"Oh, no. There's that Marco. Oh, no, Nina. Are you the agent for Marco against me?" She meant campaign manager.

"Oh, no, dear. I like you much better than I like Marco. I'm here with my friend Pearl and her son, Stan."

Those two rascals smiled like a pair of cherubs.

Kimba told them that she was running for state representative and sure would appreciate their support, word-for-word what she had just said to me.

Pearl pledged her support. Stan tried to outdo his stepmother by ladling on even more fake enthusiasm.

Kimba beamed.

Then she refocused on me. I tried to look her in the eyes, but her dress almost blinded me. It was chartreuse silk.

"Oh, you're looking at my dress. Bobby told me to wear it because it stands out on television. Do you think any stations will be covering this meeting?"

I said I doubted it, but I thought the Houston Chronicle would send somebody to cover the meeting, since state school authorities were threatening to take over the River Forest schools.

She said she was prepared to meet media people "just in case they need a sound bite from me."

As she turned to move on, Kimba said, over her shoulder "Well, I need to meet the voters. Bobby tells me always to do whatever Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison would do. You know, I'm following in her footsteps. She's my role model. She started in television just like me. But first, I've got to beat Marco."

As I patted her hand, my mind reeled at the thought of Kimba making her way to the United States Senate, empowered to vote on treaties and presidential appointments.

## § § §

Finally, they entered, seven somber people, from a side door, each accompanied by an aide.

The board allotted Joshua Evans two minutes to speak during the "public comments" portion of the agenda.

As Stan had said, Joshua used the two minutes to propose an outside audit of contracts let by the school board in the past two years. The board members fidgeted with papers as he addressed them, pointedly and exaggeratedly ignoring him. When Joshua mentioned "alleged nepotism," the board chair stood up and crossed her arms over her ample bosom.

"Sir, sir," she said, her voice so loud she did not need the microphone. "This board does not allow ad hominem attacks against school administration in these board meetings."

"Madam, I did not name a specific individual, so my remarks, by definition, cannot be ad hominem."

As testament to his dynamism, no one else in that room ignored him. In his remarks, Pastor Evans pointed out that he was following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as pastor of his church "serving all souls in this community, whatever their need or creed." He said that, as a citizen, taxpayer and father, he was "anguished at the thought that public dollars appeared to have been misappropriated by bogus service contracts when the need for education is so great."

One board member said, after the allotted two minutes were up, "Mister Evans, we remind you that you make your money off taxpayers, no different from our vendors."

A few in the audience grumbled their disapproval of the attempt to equate a truck driver's wages with graft.

## § § §

Foster, Stan and I headed to Stan's office after the meeting.

"Let's set out the cookies and punch, folks," Stan said. "The Evanses are going to caucus with us in a few minutes."

Foster looked alarmed. "Who's staying with those children? I don't think they should be left unguarded."

Stan quickly reassured him.

"Pearl's there, and a couple of my other old babes. I think a couple of church folks are keeping watch, too. Maybe some of Joshua's buddies from the Solid Waste Department. The kids are protected."

Upon their arrival, Juanita presented me to her husband.

"I'm so pleased to finally meet you, Pastor Evans," I said.

"Joshua, please," he said.

He was a compact man, no taller than Juanita, which surprised me. I'd envisioned a more imposing man, but he was shorter than Stan and Foster by several inches.

"So you're the consultant who's going to lead us out of the figurative wilderness," he said, smiling. "A real pathfinder, according to Brother Foster."

And there it was—his magnetism. Joshua Evans sounded like a Shakespearean actor.

"I've been singing your praises," Foster said. I sensed Foster's hope that I would let that pass without a wry comment. I faked a Mona Lisa smile.

"Those two candidates there tonight, which of them is worse?" Juanita said. "I don't think either of them cares a whit about this community. They both asked if they could come by the church on Sunday. Oh, sure. They'd like to have their picture taken with the children or the congregation. But, to me, it's just a question of which of them will do us the least amount of harm."

I heard the cutting edge in her voice.

Joshua Evans said, "It's a burden we gladly accepted, but it is still challenging to instill values in children who think they see evidence that a successful life means being in the NBA, or being an NBA wife. But I told each one of them that all are welcome to worship with us, but not to disrupt worship."

He did not share Juanita's bitter tone. Nevertheless, Joshua was street smart. "She's something of a tragic soul," he said. "I hear that her husband manages her life in a disreputable manner. Mister Brown is an operator in the political realm. His bride is his sock puppet."

I liked Kimba. I wanted to provide her with a fig leaf of dignity. But that was not an argument I could win. Despite being naïve, I knew she was materialistic and shallow.

## § § §

Stan was curious about Kimba.

"What is she, anyway? Anybody know?"

"If you mean ethnicity, she's multi-racial," said Juanita. "You know, she looks like America. You could hire her and meet all your diversity benchmarks."

Juanita was a straight shooter, but her tone of voice could be barbed.

"Well, back to the big question of the night, and for this we turn to the esteemed Nina Vaughn," Joshua said. "Is there anything we can call upon either one of them to do to help foil the conspiracy?"

Stan and Foster shook their heads no.

"They may both be taking money from the enemy," Stan said. "We can't trust Bobby Brown and wife, and we can't trust the other guy, either."

"Are we helpless?" Joshua Evans said, turning in my direction and looking me in my eyes. "What do you think, ma'am? Are my friends Foster and Stan correct?"

## § § §

An idea had flashed through my brain during the school board meeting. Now was the moment to let it out. I grabbed Foster's pad. We had begun writing messages as a precaution against electronic eavesdropping. Stan served the refreshments while I hand printed my notion. Finally, I passed the notepad so they could read my strategic suggestion.

SEIZE THE ELECTION OXYGEN. RUN JOSHUA AS A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE FOR STATE REP SEAT. HE IS ALREADY KNOWN AS A REFORMER AND DISSENTER. HAS STREET CRED. PULPIT CRED. HISTORIC/FAMILY CRED.

The notepad went from hand to hand.

"Bound to be past the filing deadline," said Foster, breaking the prolonged silence.

They watched as I scribbled "NO. NOT TILL END OF AUGUST."

"Nina. Do you know how to do this?" Juanita said.

I nodded. "My ex-husband contemplated something along these lines. I researched it," I said, audibly.

Foster popped open his laptop and went online to the official State of Texas site.

Momentarily, he grinned. "I'm glad I didn't make a wager. I would have bet against Nina. But she's right this time around."

Then he drew a timeline on the notepad, showing that Joshua still had several weeks until the deadline to file as a write-in candidate for the November general election.

Stan smiled and nodded his head in the affirmative. "Could be mighty interesting."

"Might be the Lord's will," said Pastor Evans. "Let me talk it over with my wife, and then with the Lord."

"Thank you," whispered Juanita, embracing me. "Will you help him if he runs?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes, yes, and yes."

"Good girl, Nina," said Foster.

"Yeah. Very good girl, Nina," Stan said. He and Joshua shook hands and bear hugged one another.

"You, too," Stan said to Juanita, wrapping her in a hug before she could react.

"And now you." I felt Stan's arms wrapping around my shoulders as he hugged me longer and tighter than he hugged the Evanses.

My feet left the floor. I was certain he kissed the top of my head.

## § § §

The next day's Houston Chronicle Metro Section carried a short piece that read:

The five-member board of the troubled River Forest School District, currently on probation by the Texas Education Agency, last night took no action on a citizen's proposal for an outside audit.

The proposal was put forward by the Rev. Joshua Evans, a life-long resident and himself a product of the River Forest School District.

Board president Lemuel Johnson told The Chronicle "Joshua Evans is a parent whose actions speak louder than the sermons he delivers to the board. He withholds his support from the district by sending his children to an exclusive private school. At the same time, by collecting a salary from the taxpayers of Houston, he is doing that which he accuses the school board of doing."

The Rev. Evans declined to comment. His wife, Juanita Evans, said her husband has been employed as a worker in the City of Houston Solid Waste Department for 29 years. "It's very hard work, and the pay is not impressive. To equate questionable appropriations to earning a salary the hard way is preposterous and dishonest," she told the Chronicle.

Joshua Evans, in addition to his "day job" with the city's Solid Waste Department, is pastor of the House of the Lord AME Church, located in the River Forest School District in northeast Houston.

## § § §

Curious about how the incident would play to a reasonable person who had not been present at the meeting, I copied the item from the newspaper and headed for Gil's. I asked customers to read the article and give me a quick reaction.

Admittedly, some were uncooperative or too busy to stop. One or two offered "to trade" with me.

One told me he didn't like Houston and, thanks to my bothering him while he was eating, he would like it even less in the future.

But several truckers gave me serious replies which, taken together, reflected that the story resonated well. That was a relief. The reading truckers knew what was going on from reading the Chronicle article.

## § § §

Later that week, Joshua Evans quietly filled out the forms and paid the $750 fee required for certification as a write-in candidate for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives.

# Chapter Eleven

Stan, Foster and I stood on the lip of the drainage ditch. We were holding a late-night conversation, more than a hundred yards away from any structure that might pick up our sound. Stan illuminated the ground with a pen light; otherwise, we would have stumbled into the steep ditch on top of one another.

Foster and Stan fretted about how we could maximize security. It was obvious from hang-up phone calls and threatening messages online that Joshua had become a nuisance to persons unknown when he filed as a write-in candidate.

"But hey," Stan said. "Think about it. Joshua's out in the open. His whereabouts are tracked all day, when he's on the job. He's driving around in a big sideloader with a radio inches away. That thing's like a tank."

## § § §

The stated objective of his write-in campaign was the reorganization of the corrupt River Forest School operation. "Joshua's looking like an angry taxpayer and parent who's blowing off righteous steam," Foster said. "That stance is his camouflage as a candidate." We each knew that the true but unbelievable objectivity was to head off a potential act of mass destruction: the flooding of a large swath of land and community through sabotage of the infrastructure.

Stan nodded. "Right. If anything were to happen to Joshua or Juanita Evans, the federales would be all over this district. It's you two outsider white professionals, you wealthy agitators, who are the biggest targets. Harland knows who you are. Since you stay in your place and have it rigged with security, and Miss Nina wants to move around, I think she'll turn out to be the main target if and when Joshua's write-in campaign shows up on Harland's radar."

"Not until he knows she's involved," Foster said.

I jumped in. "Guys. Didn't you notice? I had a conversation with Kimba Brown at the school board meeting. Even if she doesn't suspect I'm in on this plan, she babbles about everything. She's a compulsive chatterbox, like a five-year-old. I'm exposed. Kimba saw me. I was way off my usual beat that night. So Bobby Brown knows. You think he didn't sell that info to Harland?"

## § § §

Our roadside confab at there in the dark, during which I was nominated most likely to get hurt, especially after the fate of my landscaping, should have creeped me out. Strangely, I found it flattering.

I felt emboldened.

"It would look even more suspicious if I didn't keep up my usual business routine," I said. The fall selling season was here. I wanted to salvage my business.

"Yeah, act normal. But let's have Pearl keep you company when you're driving around town," Stan said. "She's got a gun permit. She's more effective than she looks. She'll have you know she was only 19 months old when Clint Eastwood was born."

## § § §

Come the next morning, over oatmeal with walnuts, Pearl asked "What are we going to do today, honey?"

If I had ever imagined myself needing a body guard (which I had not), it would not have been a pistol-packing septuagenarian.

Pearl, however, proved to be a competent assistant, as well as body guard. She took notes. She navigated. She handed me coins for the toll roads. She played the role of my auntie-from-out-of-town for the benefit of clients we popped in on. I thought when this was all over I might offer Pearl a job.

Between stops, I asked her how long Stan had been in his present line of work. "Oh, Stan. He's an industrious little fella. He had several side businesses before he retired from HPD. He never liked to work after-hours security jobs." She filled in details about Stan, facts I had been curious about. He inherited the Magnolia Gardens property from his lout of a father.

"I took a chance on marrying that weasel. He was mean to me. Then, when his liver was gone and he was near helpless, Stan promised me that if I'd help him take care of his daddy, then he'd take care of me for the rest of my life. Well, at least the old bastard, sorry honey, was too weak to fight any more. So I nursed Stan's daddy till he died. Those were some bad years–it's not easy being in charge of a low-down cuss who can't take care of himself, but that boy Stan kept his word. He's more than a son."

This was a good opening, so I asked her if Stan had ever been married.

"Oh, Lord, yes—two times. Stan loves ladies. Sent one through nursing school and the other through lawyer school. Me and Stan went to their weddings when they married their second husbands. Nice girls. They both send me birthday cards and Mother's Day cards to this day."

Pearl retreated into her own thoughts for a few moments. She seemed wistful. I felt a pang of envy upon realizing that she missed each of the two "nice girls" who once were married to Stan.

She stayed lost in her past through two more red lights, but then perked up. She patted my arm. "Don't ask me what happened, honey, cause I don't know. Maybe all that night work got to those gals. He's closed-mouthed. Ladies sure like him, though. He's got a whole passel of females out there in Magnolia Gardens. We all love the stuffing out of him. Stan's a good boy. Believe you me."

We popped in to see how things were going with Maria in the aftermath of the shoplifting publicity. If I had expected to see her shop torched or blown up, I would have been wrong. Her jewelry shop was thriving.

"I didn't expect to sell much after Father's Day, but sightseers have been coming all summer to see where Harland Warren's mistress got busted. It's been steady and the sightseers are buyers. I'm up more than fifty percent over last year."

"Well, I'm thrilled for you," I said. "I'll check back with you in a couple of weeks."

But as I pulled out of the parking space, I had a premonition that I would not be back in Maria's shop unless I came back to buy a bracelet. In a twinkling, I knew. My business was fading away. I was moving away from the life I had with Nina Vaughn and Associates.

## § § §

"Which do you like working with most, honey, politicians or store owners?" Pearl's curiosity drew me back into the moment. I realized it was the second time she had asked me that question.

"I'm sorry, Pearl. I got distracted. But that's easy. I love working in retail because the customer can see what she's buying. That's not the way it is with politics. What you buy with a politician is packaging. Think of voters as the consumers. They buy a package that is already wrapped. It could be anything. That's what they call retail politics. Behind the scenes, out of sight of voters, is where the real government business grinds, where the professionals operate. That part is hidden from the public."

"When it comes to voting, I try to figure out who's already got lots of money and then vote for the richest one," Pearl said. "The richest one has less cause to steal."

Well, she had a civic philosophy and she did vote.

Not only philosophy, Pearl had biography, too.

From her chatter that distracted me only slightly as I fought Houston traffic, I learned that Pearl grew up a country girl. Everybody in her family, up in East Texas, had to help supply the larder.

"City girls wrinkle their nose when I say that I could shoot rabbits by the time I was eight or nine. But let me tell you, it's easier to shoot a wild rabbit than it is to slaughter a pig that you raised by hand."

I said I'd try not to be like those other city girls who don't like to think about where their food comes from. I wanted to measure up to Pearl's standards.

Despite what she knew to be my opinion, she and "Stan's other girls" did not think of Magnolia Gardens as a trailer park. Yes, she knew that was what other people saw, but to its residents, Magnolia Gardens was "an assisted living facility, but with more freedom."

What a good spin doctor Pearl was. "My home is not a trailer. It has no wheels. It's on a permanent foundation. You can call it a house or a home, but, you see dear, you should not refer to it as a trailer."

That distinction stated, and acknowledged by me, she veered abruptly back to the realm of politics.

"The last time I got fooled into believing something and voting for it was community colleges. Oh, the big idea they sold us was to save us money by using school buildings at night for college classes. Now, we got the opposite of what we voted for. Community colleges built their own campuses with our money. They're not using empty school buildings at night. It ended up the direct opposite of what we voted for to create community colleges. Dee-eye-are-ee-see-tee opp-oh-sit. They said they were going to save us money but they did the direct opposite. Now we got a whole other school district with a whole other layer of taxes."

I agreed. I told her so.

## § § §

"Oh, honey. We're so close. Can we go see the garbage truck garage. It's only a couple of miles."

I said okay. Doing something to make Pearl happy would be part of the day's adventure.

"Right after the wife got killed, I would pick up the little Evans girls after school and drive them over to this side of town so they could watch their daddy come in from driving his route. He'd wave at them and they'd holler back and pretty soon he'd have to get his truck checked out by the mechanics. Off me and the girls would go, but they was satisfied their daddy would be coming home to have supper with them. The little things needed to actually see him. They couldn't see their mama no more. Oh, what a man that Joshua Evans is, God's own. Someday, maybe Stan will tell you what his daddy used to do to Joshua's folks."

"Juanita Evans told me that Stan's father used to terrorize the black people, the Evans family and the others."

"Yeah. I think that old devil may have repented before he died, but it was terrible what he did back in them days. Stan and Joshua don't like to talk about what was going on when they were kids. They call them the bad old days. It really was hell sometimes."

## § § §

Kimba and Bobby Brown started plying retail politics tirelessly in Somerset, where the majority of the district's registered voters lived in satisfied security. An entourage of athletic young men accompanied the pair of them.

He and Stan took turns shadowing them.

One Sunday, they worked the crowds at Somerset Baptist Church, a huge congregation. Members posed for pictures with the Browns and their first-grader daughter, the spitting image of her mother. Foster was there in the crowd and took pictures.

Marco, by contrast, seemed almost to have disappeared.

"They bought Marco off," Juanita said.

We were sitting in lawn chairs on the grass behind the parsonage.

"I used to watch lawyers who'd sold out their clients pretend to be working hard on a case back when I was in juvenile probation. They'd let the accused kid twist in the wind because they'd been bought off by somebody, maybe by the victim's family. Sometimes inaction speaks louder than words."

Both Juanita and Foster thought Marco was no longer a factor in the race, except for automatic votes he might garner when anyone voted the straight Democratic ballot.

I said that was hard for me to believe. A mere two years before, Marco burned with ambition to hold elected office. He campaigned energetically 18 hours each day. He solicited money unashamedly. The fire in his belly burned as brightly as ET's heart light.

"I'm guessing he's been promised something for the future," Foster said. "Something better. State rep doesn't pay much. Here's my guess. The party bosses did some kind of polling and found out Marco would come in third, out of any runoff, behind Kimba and Joshua. Or, Harland decided he wanted Kimba in office, so he had someone tell Marco he was running third, even if Marco was still viable to make the runoff. Either way, I'd bet their internal polling shows Joshua will be in the runoff."

That was a surprise, to learn how closely Foster had been tracking the race. "I wish we could hire a poll," he said. "But every pollster is wired to one of the parties. All we can do is to analyze what we know from our own surveillance."

Stan had been doing some field work for just that reason: intelligence gathering. He saw something interesting the day before.

"I went out to the garage yesterday, as the guys were coming in off their garbage routes. About a dozen of the drivers were in line, waiting to get their trucks checked by the mechanics, when Joshua pulled in. Those dudes in front of him hopped down from the cabs of their trucks, hit the ground and cheered him. The mechanics waved their shop towels. It was a bunch of workers in fluorescent safety vests doing a line dance, giddy as a bunch of kids, or guys in a beer commercial."

Stan paused and breathed deeply before continuing. "Except that it was spontaneous. No rehearsal. Damnedest thing I've ever seen."

# Chapter Twelve

_Down in the meadow_

Where the green grass grows

There sat Sarah

Sweet as a rose

We were congregated outside in the church parking lot, which was also the playground. I was holding one end of the jump rope and chanting, while Juanita operated the other end. I knew Sarah was going to call Foster in to jump with her. I could be sure, because, in turn, Rachel, Deborah, Brianna and Alycia had already called him to jump in. Everybody was laughing.

Foster had the best coordination of any man I knew outside the world of professional dance. But I was the one who remembered all the words to "Down in the Meadow." After a count of 35, Juanita dropped her end of the rope in a giggling jag.

Too soon, way too soon, playtime was over. We grown-ups had to get down to our serious business.

Meeting out of doors in the parking lot freed us from the tedium of handwriting or typing messages to one another to foil electronic eavesdroppers. The girls' whooping made for noise that might foil a hidden microphone.

Marco still did not appear to be doing any campaigning: no public appearances, no yard signs, no mailers. He had no website. That was a new problem. We had planned for a three-way content that would put Joshua in a runoff and attract the media. It seemed now to be a two-way contest between Kimba and Joshua without the novelty of a runoff.

We were in total agreement: Marco, once so ambitious, had become a straw man. Marco was phoning it in. Why?

## § § §

"Joshua may be in danger because now he looks certain to get into the runoff," Foster said.

"I thought we agreed he was safe in his big truck with the radio," Stan said. He was as confused as I was.

Foster tried to explain. "That's my point, Stan. We may have a state-representative-to-be in the preacher here. We may be on the verge of sending someone to Austin who's incorruptible. The other side is beginning to realize that Joshua's a real threat. By now, there's a target on his back. But if Joshua loses, all chance of stopping these guys is gone. We need to keep Joshua in the public eye. If Joshua is out of the public eye, he's in danger because of **. . .** "

"Retaliation," said Stan, finishing Foster's sentence.

Juanita gasped. "Because they could eliminate him and they would get away with it and the public would not be aroused because Joshua would be anonymous. But if he's making waves, they might come after him because he's a threat. There's danger on all sides now," she said. She was visibly upset.

"I get it," Stan said. "Damned if you do and damned if you don't. This is tough."

Joshua did not seem to share their trepidation.

"The Lord moves in awesome and mysterious ways," he said. "Sometimes he moves to protect us in the presence of our enemies."

I was loathe to do it, but it was only right that I remind them how we got ourselves into this situation.

"Originally, remember, the plan was for Joshua to get into the race and force either the donkey or the elephant into a runoff. The objective was to try to thwart the land-grab out here."

Nobody said anything. I plodded ahead with my summation. "The runoff, after the election in November, was supposed to garner media coverage because so few races would remain undecided, so each race would get more scrutiny–what Foster likes to think of as sunlight."

"Purifying light," Joshua said.

"I get where this is headed," Stan said. "You're thinking there won't be a runoff if Marco is nullified like we suspect. Kimba could win it outright. We wouldn't get the exposure we were shooting for. Bobby Brown could run her office as Harland's henchman in the state capital."

"Right," Foster said. "Up to a point. You got the Dems and the GOP. But in this district, not too many people vote a straight party ticket. It's that weird, demographically. Voter registration is low, except in Somerset where you've got the middle class. Turnout is unpredictable."

"Wait a minute. I'm sensing reservations from Nina," Juanita said. She leaned toward me. "Tell me. What's bothering you?"

My concern about the tricky process of casting a write-in vote was escalating.

"It boils down to this. You use a touch-screen device. The party nominees' names are printed on the election booklet. Voters can dial to Kimba's name or Marco's name and put an X beside the choice. But to vote for Joshua, they first have to highlight the word write-in, and then wait for a keyboard to appear on a screen, then type the name on the keyboard, using the dial to select each letter and space."

I pantomimed a demonstration of the process. A dial. A virtual keyboard.

"Balls! More complicated than working my remote control," Stan said. "Oh, real sorry, folks." He slumped in his chair, looking at the ground.

The man with the dirty mouth was correct.

## § § §

We analyzed the dilemma.

Our main opponent, Kimba, was a gorgeous cheerleader, who grew up in Somerset, where the majority of eligible voters were clustered. She had name recognition. Her name was on the ballot guide as the Republican. Marco's name and party affiliation were also on the ballot.

But Joshua's name did not appear on the voting apparatus. Voters would have to dial-type Joshua's name, but first they would have to call up the virtual keyboard.

To do that, they'd have to know about him, what to do to make the virtual keyboard appear onscreen, and how to spell his name.

The surface beneath our folding chairs was cooling. A an early-evening breeze blew across the church's asphalt parking lot. It should have been relaxing, but it wasn't.

I said I was willing to underwrite a mailout to registered voters, showing how to vote for Joshua, now that Harland Warren had made me wealthy. But that tactic would cost us the element of surprise, and surprise was our main strategy.

"It would be a disaster to elevate this campaign's profile," Foster said.

"A conundrum," Joshua said. "I wish I could say that folks educate themselves before they vote, but I've learned, to my sorrow, most do not."

"Hold it, folks," Stan said. "I got something here." He laid out his idea, which was the same one I'd been thinking about.

What we needed, he said, was another write-in candidate to slice the election into a fourth piece. I had been thinking the same thing. I was glad that somebody else was on my wavelength.

"I could file to run as a second write-in candidate," Stan said. "That would crazy-up the campaign. I'd pull some GOP voters from the Browns. Maybe even some votes from Marco."

"Identity politics. White law man. An appeal to blind reflex. Good strategy, though not noble," Foster said.

Juanita didn't like the sound of that. "The best I can say about that cynical ploy is that it might succeed," she said. "We all realize that some people will vote for Stan over the silly girl Kimba because he's white and she's whatever she is."

The five of us sat still, except for swatting mosquitoes. Like Juanita, I was troubled about the choice between being idealistic and being crafty.

We passed several minutes in silence, until the pastor spoke.

Placing his palms on his knees, Joshua leaned forward in the lawn chair, drawing closer to Stan.

"In this campaign of yours, would you speak ill of me or my race or use racial code words, my brother?"

"No, Joshua."

"What then would you be about in this write-in campaign you contemplate?"

"I could say I want to serve the public as a civilian the way I served as a police officer, but with police experience That my main focus will be public safety and education."

Joshua nodded several times. He turned toward his wife.

"I hear no falsity. Brother Stan's got every right to offer himself as a candidate for office. It's not for us to look into the souls of our fellow citizens to judge why they might vote for him. Why, if I had not already declared myself a candidate, I feel sure he'd get my vote. We'd be better off if more folks would step out and offer themselves for office. I feel a hand greater than yours or mine at work here, guiding our brother."

Someone else said "Amen" in unison with me.

It was Foster.

# Chapter Thirteen

Stan filed the paperwork to run as a write-in candidate with hours to spare before the deadline. On the record, our two friends were now political adversaries.

With two unorthodox political campaigns operating out of the tin house, we hunkered, Foster and I.

He never went home to his penthouse. For the duration of the campaign, with Stan in the race, Foster would make the tin house his residence. My occupancy of Pearl's guest bedroom was now semi-permanent. I had not seen my house in weeks.

The arrangement was not too different from college life.

## § § §

One morning, we were busy trying to screen Joshua's friends who had volunteered to be poll watchers. We were militant about spies. No volunteers were accepted as workers unless one of us had known the person for at least five years.

I noticed Foster's two-day stubble. "This is an amazing commitment, Foster. I've always admired you, but until now, you always seemed like an elitist. But now you don't even take time to shave."

"Let's compare commitment to the cause. I'm staying in a property I own, with my condo watched over by security staff and a concierge. You're staying in a mobile home, guarded by an elderly cowgirl, while you've turned your house into a heartbreak hotel. My deal's sweeter. Your commitment is greater, so you're the bigger hero."

He was joshing. My house-sitters were cops, each willing to trade free rent for guard duty while their respective divorces were in the works.

Our running topic was all the twists and turns the summer had brought, especially our new companions, the Evanses.

"The difference between Joshua Evans and everyone else, including me and including you," Foster said, "is that he is so committed to witnessing. He wills himself to be an example every day. The best I ever do is to react to evil and try to step around it. Joshua stands in the road and challenges evil head-on. It must not be easy. I have to add, though, that I get a good feeling whenever I'm around him."

I felt the same way.

## § § §

Pearl adored Foster almost as much as she did Stan, now that she had discovered him next door. Among the favors Pearl lavished on Foster was to record golf and tennis tournaments so he would be lured to come watch TV at her place in the evening.

One evening, the four of us—Stan, Foster, Pearl and I—were eating dinner in front of the set in Pearl's living room. Foster was watching the U.S. Open Tennis Championship, recorded by Pearl earlier in the day.

Suddenly, Foster grabbed the remote control, knocking over his TV She was visibly upset.

tray as he lunged. Pearl, Stan, and I froze. We stared at the rewinding images.

There onscreen was Bobby Brown, walking backward toward a much-shorter man who held a microphone above his head. Foster paused the tape. He glared at the set. Nobody spoke.

Shaking his head, Foster hit the play button. We heard the announcer say "Bobby Brown, the NBA great, will be in the stands today, watching this afternoon's semifinals final match. Got a minute, Bobby?"

"Sure, Dan. What's on your mind, man?"

"Well, we hear that your wife–you married a Texan, right?–has entered the world of politics back in the Lone Star state, right, Bobby?"

"Yeah, Dan. She's a candidate for the Texas Legislature."

"Do you ever hit the campaign trail with her Bobby, meeting the voters?"

"Yeah, Dan. We get out in the community, giving it our all. She's up against a couple of guys that came out of nowhere to screw up her campaign. One's a white racist cop. One's a black pedophile that got himself a bunch of little fos **...** "

The sound and image disappeared into static and specks for several seconds before a commercial played.

"Play it again, man. I'm not believing this." Stan said.

Foster rewound and replayed the fragment of an interview. Once again, Bobby was cut off in mid-sentence.

"Bless you and your old VCR, Pearl. Bless you for the evidence. By now, the network's deleted that sound bite, but you captured it. We've got evidence of malicious slander by Bobby Brown."

Foster was jubilant.

I did not share his glee.

"Not so fast," I said. "If you're thinking Bobby trapped himself into legal settlements with Stan and the preacher, you may be right, legally speaking. But think, Foster. Perception is reality. A man with little girls living in his home has just been called a pedophile. A preacher. A city employee. A candidate for office with an election only a few weeks off. Referred to as a pedophile."

"Oh, mercy. Nina's right. This could be bad for that family," Pearl said. Her voice was an octave higher than normal.

Foster's grin vanished.

Stan jumped to his feet.

"Get in the truck, Foster. We got to let the Evanses know about this, if they haven't heard already," he said. "That asshole Bobby just insinuated criminality."

"Why would that Bobby Brown say such things on TV?" Pearl said.

"Because Bobby Brown was high," said Stan. "Flying higher'n a kite."

## § § §

Since Bobby Brown's outburst on national TV involved electoral politics on top of an allegation of child abuse, two hot-button topics, this was a story that would grow legs. I knew in my gut we would confront news media showing up Sunday at the little church known as House of the Lord.

We had to get out in front of this runaway train.

## § § §

Joshua and Juanita, sickened by the incident with Bobby and terrified of its ramifications for their status as foster parents, obtained good legal advice. And they followed the instructions of their family attorney, who happened to be Foster, by declining to speak to reporters.

Joshua, though, could not stay home from his city job; he had not filed a proper vacation request with his supervisor at the Solid Waste Department.

By the time the sun went down on Friday, the Evans family was under siege.

I tried to comfort the distraught Juanita by telling her that media frenzies go away, usually within 72 hours. "Any other time of the year, if there were more news headlines, you wouldn't have them in your face like this."

Foster and I had called editors at local media outlets, imploring them not to accost the underage children of the Evans household. We also informed the editors that the older girls were the biological children of Pastor Evans, and that the home had been approved for foster care years ago.

Perhaps Foster made the right lawyer noises when he spoke to media management. In Houston, Bobby's allegations were not repeated.

But in cyber media, Bobby's trash talk prevailed. Now, because of the unusual nature of the election, mainstream outlets set about covering the political angle of the story.

The exposure made Juanita miserable. "We try so hard to protect the girls, and despite the effort, the slime is slapping up against our front door."

She dreaded what Sunday would bring, for Joshua vowed that worship would go on as usual. He decreed that no one would be turned away from the House of the Lord, nor would he shrink from his commitment to preach. Joshua refused to change the regular order of the worship service just because "some foolish man" had committed slander against him.

# Chapter Fourteen

On Sunday morning, before daybreak, Stan, Foster, Pearl and I walked along dark, quiet Davey Wiggins Road with flashlights, headed for the House of the Lord. As we moved along, we divvied up our tasks for the church service to come.

Stan and Pearl would direct traffic. We assumed the small parking lot would fill; the preacher had asked his most faithful members to arrive early, to pray with him. The curiosity seekers we expected would have to take their chances parking on the sides of the road.

Foster would stay by Juanita's side to provide reassurance.

"Nice chapeau, Nina," said Stan, as dawn's light made it possible for him to see me. Pearl had provided me a wide-brim straw hat, tactfully suggesting that I should blend in with the ladies of the church who favored hats on Sunday morning. The hat did modify my navy-blue suit from a corporate look to one more in keeping with Sunday morning in an old-time church setting.

I would be the greeter, or, as Foster insisted, "the deaconess of the day." In that role, I could handle any media types who showed up. None had called ahead, but that meant nothing. Reporters rarely called ahead.

## § § §

With Foster's cell phone in my pocket and a stack of programs in my hand, I posted myself in the church's vestibule in order to could get the feel for the location.

I spied a couple of ladies from Magnolia Gardens who had come early to join the church faithful in their prayer vigil. Except for the subdued voices, there was a peaceful ambience in the sanctuary.

But by the time the children's choir entered an hour later, the House of the Lord, with a permitted occupancy of 220 persons, was packed. Several dozen standing people lined the walls.

Stan, an old hand at crowd estimating, said total turnout was 256. Attendance on Sunday morning normally was about eighty souls. You would have no trouble identifying the church members, though; they were the ones carrying their Bibles.

An elderly deacon rose from his seat on the dais and directed the congregation to Psalm 61:2. In unison, the congregation read:

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

As the reading began (I could follow because a church lady rushed to my side to share her Bible), Joshua Evans entered from the back of the sanctuary and stepped to the pulpit.

"Amen," he said. And then, gripping the sides of the pulpit, Joshua Evans began:

Jesus cried out to His Father from the cross that He not be forsaken.

Thus was our Lord was tested.

We all may be tested, and we should be ready. The significance is not that we are tested, it is what the soul does under duress and in despair. A person cannot grow in spirit and testify to others when all is easy.

There are times when we know we have disobeyed the Lord, and we face the wages of sin. We know where we strayed. When we pray after known sin, we feel regret. But we don't cry out to God asking him why. We know why. It was our own willfulness.

Our most severe trials come in those periods of our lives when we've tried to live righteous lives, and say to ourselves that we have succeeded.

It is when we feel we have done no wrong that our spiritual anguish attacks us. It is when we feel in our hearts that the Lord God Almighty is testing us. A man under such testing may say to himself, "Is this really necessary, to make me suffer? I was doing what I thought God wanted me to do."

Brothers and sisters, imploring God Almighty to explain the sacred mysteries of His ways is human, but it is futile. Man is not God's equal.

God does not owe us an explanation of His mysteries. Believing we are entitled to explanations is the prideful first step leading away from the Lord Almighty. In times of trial, we cannot pray for insights or explanations. We can only wait for . . .

## § § §

The phone in my pocket vibrated, breaking the spell cast by Joshua's powerful preaching.

I stepped outside to answer.

It was Stan, calling to alert me that "the scrawny little TV guy that does the undercover stuff is on his way across the parking lot. Looks like he's here with a wife or a little woman the right size and age to be his wife."

I thanked Stan and flipped the phone closed just as Louie Ferguson and a woman reached the church door. Both were dressed appropriately for the occasion. I held the door for them.

Louie was my favorite newsman to watch, but my least favorite to deal with. His career arc was improbable; it was the reverse of most journalism paths. He started as a history teacher, then developed a public-access history program, which led to books, which resulted in his TV contract.

Not once had I ever been able to persuade Louie to cover one of my clients. He was not interested in what he said was "promotional fluff," not even the high-quality promotional fluff coming from Nina Vaughn and Associates. His high standards were inconvenient, but always were even-handed.

Louie Ferguson and I only worked together on one story. The only interview I gave after Galen's conviction was the one I granted to Louie because I knew he had studied the case.

I never regretted doing the interview; it was objective and balanced.

At the end, Louie said to the camera lens, "So it appears Galen Vaughn is a man who was always in too big a hurry to be troubled with details. He wanted to make a lot of money. He was goal-oriented. His conviction is a parable for the times. Live from outside the home of an ordinary family with tough times ahead of them, this is Louie Ferguson."

Louie was "outside the home" of my "ordinary family" because declined to come inside to do the interview. He explained that entering my house might affect his objectivity. I remember how irked Louie's cameraman was, sweltering in the scorching Houston heat.

## § § §

Until he arrived at the church, I had seen Louie only once after that interview, at some forgettable ceremonial event. He asked me on that occasion how I was holding up, and thanked me, belatedly, for that exclusive interview.

"Well, Nina Vaughn. An unexpected pleasure to see you again."

We shook hands and he introduced his wife, Linda.

Each of them politely accepted a program from me.

"Are you on the clock, Nina, or are you here...?" Louie seemed to be at a loss as to how he should frame a question that might have intruded on a worship observance.

"Volunteering," I replied, which I thought explained my presence to the extent that Louie was entitled to information.

"It's Louie's day off," Linda said, giving me information I had not requested, but was glad to have.

"Yep," Louie said. That was to let me know he was not chasing an interview opportunity or covering the story. He was here on his personal time.

In very few words, the Fergusons and I had exchanged a lot of information, in coded words.

"I saw the mayor Thursday at a charity golf tournament," Louie said. "He told me about this city employee who is a preacher on the side. First I knew about it. Mayor is kind of an admirer of the preacher, from a distance, of course. Got me interested, so here we are, ready to see what this fellow is all about. Maybe get to hear some soul-stirring preaching."

That was bonus information: intriguing to discover and generously provided by Louie. He didn't have to tell me about the mayor, but he knew it would be helpful.

"Thanks, Louie," I whispered, as I opened the door into the sanctuary.

I followed the Fergusons in. Joshua had just begun to pray. We stopped where we were, in the aisle, bowed our heads, and heard this entreaty to the almighty:

Our Father, in tortuous days and long nights when pervasive evil seems about to overtake us, guide us, your stumbling, faltering children.

Lead me, Father, your servant, Joshua, a struggling, imperfect man. Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I, for it is only in thy righteousness that I find my soul and my eternal salvation.

# Chapter Fifteen

Traditionally, Sunday is a gift from the TV news people to people like me. Sunday is a "slow news day." We publicity people have a better chance to get our clients on TV. The weekend folks at the station have a news hole to fill on Sunday without much breaking news coming from business or government to fill the gaping news hole with.

Back in my old life–the one I was living before this all started out on Davey Wiggins Road–I would sift through clients' cultures, traditions, recipe books and family trees for Sunday news feature possibilities to help weekend editors help serve my clients.

But never, until that Sunday when Louie Ferguson and his wife showed up at the House of the Lord, had two reporters affiliated with the same station competed to cover a Sunday "story" of mine.

The first was the veteran Louie Ferguson, who came out to the House of the Lord on his own time.

Later, there came Justin, a freelancer with an assignment. With camera on his shoulder, wearing a sweatshirt and cutoffs, he poked his head into the sanctuary as the strains of the closing hymn faded. I took Justin's arm and walked him out into the vestibule quickly, before he offended the worshippers with his inappropriate attire.

I called up my prissiest bearing. "How may I help you?"

"I read the Chronicle story about how this preacher was trashed at that school board meeting," Justin said. "I called my desk about it and they said to see what I could do with the story for tonight. So I'm here to talk to the main man preacher."

As Louie and Linda emerged from the sanctuary, I noticed that Louie had spotted Justin, but had kept moving with the exiting congregation.

I was still shadowing Justin when, moments later, the phone vibrated. Louie Ferguson was calling to say he was heading back to the station.

"That Justin is one warped ignoramus, Nina. Everything he touches is sarcastic. I think he's going to screw up the story here, with his cheap brand of irony. That would be unconscionable, Nina, and you know it. I'm going to pull this story out from under him. A story like Joshua's doesn't come along very often."

I said I knew that; otherwise, would I be working pro bono, way out of my normal orbit?

"Well, we're on the same wavelength then. I want to tell you something, Nina. I don't know what's going on here, but if you and Foster Adamson..."

"Foster...?"

"Oh, come on, Nina. I saw him. Seeing Foster is what tipped me that something big is going on here. This is not Foster's usual environment."

"Well, it is, Louie. It is something. You're right. Something important is happening and this is ground zero."

"I believe you. The preacher sure seems to be the real deal. The image that comes to my mind is that man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. I hope whatever his agenda is, or whoever's agenda it in play, is worth the risk to that preacher. Got to go now. Here's our exit."

I snapped the phone closed; startled to realize that Louie was racing to the station, frantic to get control of the Joshua Evans story.

What Louie implied about Joshua being in danger was ominous; after all, Louie knew about the dark side of politics and power. But knowing that Louie was getting involved personally, actually racing to the studio, was exhilarating. I had never seen Louie excited or emotional. Louie was fired up, which was so completely out of character.

## § § §

Whatever happened back in the newsroom, I never found out. Louie's face-off at the television station fell under the heading of things I wanted to know but was too busy to investigate.

But I do know the outcome. The station aired two segments that Sunday night, an odd lineup even for a slow Sunday.

One featured the Reverend Joshua Evans as a long-established community leader in an often-overlooked pocket in far northeast Houston. He was a hard-working city employee. Louie reported that segment.

Justin's piece was about the state rep race in which there were two write-in candidates. Justin dubbed the write-in candidates "the trailer-park mogul and the preaching garbage man." He had footage of Joshua Evans in the pulpit, apparently shot through the back door of the church sanctuary before I knew he was there. The footage was wonderful; the pastor looked and sounded authentic and fatherly.

The trailer-park mogul, that is to say Stan, "could not be reached for comment" and thus did not appear in Justin's report. All we saw was the trailer park. Justin must have set his camera on a tripod in order to jump in front of the camera to report "live from the trailer-park home of Stan Deleon, the other write-in candidate vying to beat the odds in an election contest that's weird, even for Houston."

## § § §

The impact of the two angles put the write-in races back in the news, overshadowing the Bobby Brown incident. I was reminded of the passage in Joshua's sermon he was delivering while Justin was secretly recording: God does move in mysterious ways.

Justin's trespass with his camera into the worship service, reprehensible on its face, served Joshua's image well.

## § § §

Our first dilemma was finding a way to end run around the well-greased machine operations of the Republicans and Democrats in order to turn the free media into winning. The two parties' minions operated year-round. They had mailing lists. They had money and choreographed special-interest groups. They had people who worked full-time at maintaining their power. They had cadres who made money working elections.

The political machines of both political parties had so rigged the system that the mere act of filing as something other than a Democrat or a Republican would cause a person to be labeled as naïve, a nut case, or a spoiler.

Foster's old law firm had a partner who specialized in politics. That fellow's dictum was that any write-in candidate could be bought off, usually for five hundred dollars.

## § § §

Our other problem was how to instruct voters to cast a write-in ballot. I had been fretting about this challenge for days, with no clue.

The stroke of magic came as Pearl and I were relaxing that day after church. I call for me came on Pearl's phone.

"Nina. This is Linda Ferguson, Louie's wife. I'm at home, but Louie's nowhere around. Understand. This is just Linda Ferguson calling you. Not Louie, just me, Linda. I hope you don't think I'm crazy, but I have an idea. Wait. Let me back up. I teach fifth grade. When Louie told me Reverend Evans might do better if voters only knew how to cast a write-in ballot, an idea popped into my head. I thought of those little girls of his. Could you write a little song for them to sing that gives the steps, and put it on DVDs you could hand out? They don't cost much."

# Chapter Sixteen

Her brow furrowed, her linen tunic and pants fashionably crinkled, Juanita was adjusting barrettes and pulling up little socks. I was relieved to see she had managed to overcome her concerns about exposing the girls to the "risks of tawdry culture."

We knew we were on a roll. We were charged up with a shared sense of purpose. Juanita had admitted this video was our best shot at changing the dynamics of the election.

The pastor/candidate would not appear in the campaign video. We did cast the family from Gil's, some customers, any church lady who wanted to get into the act, plus a pack of actresses from Magnolia Gardens to appear.

I had spent hour after frustrating hour trying to compose a lyric using the letters E-V-A-N-S, that is I kept trying, without success, until Joshua told me to forget it; that the objective should be to explain steps involved in casting a write-in ballot.

"My name is beside the point. For voters who want to vote for me or for Brother Stan, we've got to show them how the device works, because nobody at their polling place will show them."

Convinced by Joshua's pragmatism, I came up with lyrics that described the write-in procedure without using any candidate's name. But my words without the set and performers would have fallen flat.

## § § §

We used Gil's parking lot as the location and a tractor-trailer truck as the backdrop. After each "verse," the singers go behind the truck while the dancers and marchers scamper out, giving the little singers time to pick up a different sign or flag and pop out again from behind the truck.

During the performance, in the lower-right box on the screen, a hand demonstrates the operation, using "Sam Houston" for the name of the hypothetical write-in.

The little singers on the video recite the instructions three times.

On the screen choose the write-in square.

The invisible keyboard will now be there.

Typey dial typey dial—spell out the name.

Show your mama how to do the same.

The band consisted of piano and drum. Stan recruited the musicians. I never had time to ask who they were or whence they hailed, but they were good enough to be professionals and cordial enough to perform gratis.

The video ends with a close-up of Penny's baby face as she issues the call to action, "write in," at the top of her three-year-old lungs. She pronounces it "WYE-teen."

Finally, there's a screen shot of the obligatory Lone Star flag overprinted with the exhortation "Now you know how. Show you know how."

Back at the tin house, after the shoot, Foster and Stan copied the video for hours.

## § § §

The next day, the little girls debuted "the Write-in Rap Song" live onstage at the Somerset Middle School fall festival. The audience whooped delightedly.

All four candidates in the race had received invitations "to appear and be acknowledged."

The Evanses attended as a clan, with Foster along to hand out flyers and CDs.

Candidate Stan Deleon made an appearance, too. His entourage consisted of Pearl and me, together with one of the children from Gil's, who was doing this for extra credit in her history class. We carried simple flyers, printed in four languages, as mandated for Houston elections.

Kimba and Bobby showed up late and left early. Bobby was publicity shy after his outburst on national television. Seeing him, my thoughts flashed to the Republicans who now had to ride out this campaign worried that the Bobby Brown scandal would slosh onto the other party nominees.

Marco was there for the duration of the festival, with his family, all wearing their "Remarkable Marco" T-shirts and ably mingling with the festival crowd. This was not Marco's first rodeo. He and his wife and children knew how to work a crowd. I rather enjoyed watching do their job so well, especially the personable Ruiz children.

But it was not to be an entirely happy day on the campaign trail for Marco.

From the instant Marco realized that Foster and the Evans children were handing out DVDs, his political radar kicked in. I saw distress in his eyes when he approached me, arms extended, offering a big hug. He had no way of knowing what was on those DVDs, but he spied the cute children and he saw me and, savvy political animal that he was, he knew we had added a new chapter to our campaign play book.

All this I knew in an instant, because of what he said to me: "I thought you liked to be inside the tent."

## § § §

While the Evans girls did hand out the DVDs at other events, they did not perform "The Write-In Rap Song" in public again. Disrupting the routine of their lives was not only forbidden by their parents, it was unnecessary.

Their video went viral within hours. The networks picked it up that evening.

#  Chapter Seventeen

Unlike the savvy Marco Ruiz, the year-round, fulltime political pros did not wake up and smell what we were brewing in the state rep district out in the boondocks until they saw the video online.

A few did, actually, but by the time they sprang awake, it was too late to stop our guerrilla campaign. We heard that voters who lived in all areas of Houston were asking early-vote officials how to vote for a write-in candidate.

Only at that point did the consultants find out about the ballot-box insurrection. Only then did they realize that the girls' video had provided a rare opportunity for voters to tell the political parties to stuff it.

It should have been happy news, but I wasn't happy. Hearing about these rumblings during early voting, of voters trying to vote for a write-in candidate, any write-in candidate, and sensing that we had stirred things up to the brink of destabilization, I started to imagine unintended consequences.

I asked Foster what would happen if Stan made it into a runoff but Joshua did not.

It was time to face facts: Stan had picked up momentum, maybe for the reasons Juanita predicted; he was a white lawman.

Typically, Foster was several moves ahead of me with his strategic thinking. He pulled out worksheets he had developed for every potential election outcome. Joshua wins by a majority. Kimba wins by a majority. Marco wins by a majority. Stan wins by a majority. Four scenarios in which there would not be a runoff.

Of course, as Foster pointed out, we shouldn't spend much energy reckoning with any candidate winning without a runoff. With four candidates, for any one of them to win an outright majority of votes was statistically unlikely.

I studied Foster's runoff scenarios and what we would need to do in each case.

RUNOFF A. Pastor vs. Kimba. Stan endorses Pastor.

RUNOFF B. Pastor vs. Marco. Stan endorses Pastor.

RUNOFF C. Stan vs. Kimba. Pastor endorses Stan.

RUNOFF D. Stan vs. Marco. Pastor endorses Stan.

RUNOFF E. Kimba vs. Marco. No endorsement either by Stan or Pastor.

RUNOFF F. Pastor and Stan. Nightmare scenario! But not far-fetched. We could not allow our two guys to end up facing one another in a runoff.

## § § §

"Welcome to the twisted world of electoral manipulation, Miss Nina," Foster said when I looked up from his worksheet. "One of the police unions endorsed Stan last night. A check for three thousand dollars will be hand-delivered in a couple of hours. What say you? When should Stan confess to the sisters and brothers in uniform that he's not serious about taking a seat in Austin but actually is a straw man?"

The prospect of Joshua facing Stan in the runoff was tormenting Foster, our master of strategy. Unlike ordinary people, Foster has a chess player's mind.

I asked him if it would be so bad if Stan were to win. After all, Stan and Joshua wanted the same thing.

"It would be a calamity," he said. "It can't happen. Grab your purse. Let's go over there. I need to talk to Stan, right now."

We crunched our way to the end of the shell driveway. Abruptly, Foster stopped at the fence and turned to me.

"Can't you see how it would look if our two guys land in a runoff? Like a trick played on the black candidate by the white cop. We'd know the truth, but, as you say, perception is reality. We sure can't go public to explain our good intentions. Who'd believe us? And here's a new kink. I'm convinced Harland is wise to us and is starting a counter-offensive. Stan's getting too much support with no effort from him. He didn't even fill out the questionnaire and yet he got the police union endorsement. That's unprecedented. He didn't go through their screening. Nobody asked him where he stands on the issues the union is interested in. It smells bad."

I wasn't ready to take responsibility for the looming consequences, so I argued instead. "But Stan's a retired policeman. The three thousand dollars is a symbol of solidarity with a brother cop."

"You'd think there would be loyalty from police," Foster said. "But Marco's brother is a policeman. And Marco interviewed for police-union endorsements, jumped through their screening hoops. Don't you see the machinations? It's being orchestrated by Harland with his ms machine."

Was this it? Corruption and scare politics rolled into one? I thought of Juanita. She predicted race-based voting. She suspended her skepticism because her husband trusted us.

Foster was right. We were responsible for luring Joshua Evans into the treacherous world of politics, so we had to do something. We had stirred up more than one hornet's nest.

## § § §

Stan sprinted over to meet us, grinning all the way.

"You won't believe it, guys. I just got an endorsement from some sportsmen's group, duck hunters I think."

"Don't take the money, Stan. It's tainted," Foster said.

Stan turned to me. "What's he talking about?"

Foster started to answer, but Stan showed him the palm of a hand. "Not you. I want to hear what Nina says." His big grin had vanished.

"Foster thinks Harland is helping you, like the endorsement from the union. It was too easy. You didn't fill out their questionnaire. You didn't go for an interview. Foster is afraid that you and Joshua are headed for a runoff and that Harland is masterminding a pileup where you and Joshua are eliminated."

Foster couldn't wait. He jumped in with his anxiety about the potential for violence.

"We put the Evans family into the snake pit. Now, they're exposed—those kids, the congregation. If you and Joshua come in first and second in votes and you were to win, Joshua would be a big loser. But that would be just the beginning. Harland is vindictive. He's a sociopath. Not unlike your father used to be, come to think of it."

Stan turned to me. "Is that how you see it, Nina?"

"It doesn't matter what she thinks," said a grim-faced Foster. "Listen, Stan. Nina has a knack for promotion, like inventing black-eyed-pea tacos for New Year's, but she's prone to magical thinking. We can't afford la-la thinking now. We've got to make straight-up decisions. No more capers from the mind of Nina Vaughn."

What hurt so much about the tirade Foster directed at me was how much was true. I felt it like a physical blow.

"Foster's right." That was the most I could sputter as a reply. I didn't turn on the water works, but I wanted to. I was hurt.

But this wasn't about me, I knew. I could pout and weep later, after the election.

## § § §

The three of us stood there on the driveway, shocked by what we might have unleashed, however unintentionally.

Maybe a minute went by before Stan said, "Thanks for the honesty, honey." That was directed at me, not to Foster.

Foster hadn't finished. He needed to vent more.

Stan and I let him get it all out.

"This shows how the permanent political class, people who don't actually do anything useful for a living, keep a choke hold on government. They lock up outcomes in advance, before ordinary people start thinking about issues. A few dozen people control elections. We end up with candidates like Marco, who's probably not all that bad, or somebody like Kimba Brown, an decorative doofus who's married to a thug. To try to head off a conspiracy, we three clever citizens came up with a stunt..."

Stan interrupted. "A smart stunt."

"True. Nina had the brilliant idea of having Joshua run as a write-in. Now, we've got one write-in too many. Our stunt has devoured our good intentions. We've got to cease and desist being manipulators. These tactics are not worthy of Joshua."

"Yeah, he is the real deal. You can tell by how he inspired Nina's buddy, that cranky old TV guy who's always investigating somebody."

"We can't let Juanita and Joshua become road kill," I said.

"I get it. I get it," Stan said. "I'm out. What next?"

We trudged back to the tin house, not speaking to one another.

The statement we composed informed everybody in Stan's campaign database that Stan was withdrawing as a candidate due to "a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity."

## § § §

The big day arrived: the first Tuesday in November. The long ballot was topped by the national presidential race, followed by state races and then local races, down to the precinct election. Pearl and I stayed in her trailer, keeping in touch Foster that Tuesday as he drove from one polling place to the next, on the lookout for any trouble.

Our poll watchers were not able to report in; phones were not allowed inside the polling places. Consequently, he had no sense of how the election was going from the time the polls opened at seven in the morning, until they closed 12 hours later.

We were too tired to stay up late to wait for results. Joshua had to rise and shine the next day to get to work the next day, and the Evans kids had school.

It was mid-morning the next day before we obtained reliable news about the outcome.

"Wednesday is for winners," Pearl said as she poured coffee for Stan and me. Enough voters had paid attention to the write-in names, and to the Evans girls' DVD, to put Joshua into a runoff with Kimba Brown.

Despite having withdrawn, and despite being a write-in candidate, Stan came in third, ahead of Marco.

## § § §

The morning after the election, I persuaded Juanita to call Marco Ruiz to ask him to endorse Joshua in the runoff.

Maybe I was motivated by petulance. That was Foster's accusation when he found out about Juanita's call to Marco. He was irked with me for not consulting him first. But he couldn't say I was engaging in magical thinking; it was a practical tactic. Most important: it was a successful one.

"He'll do it," Juanita said, when she called me back. "Mister Ruiz told me his intention had been not to endorse anybody. But get this. Before I called Mister Ruiz this morning, Bobby Brown got him first, and issued threats. It was so insulting to Mister Ruiz that he made up his mind that if we asked him, he'd give Joshua his endorsement. If not, he wouldn't endorse. I'm so glad I called him."

I was glad, too.

Even though Marco had more to gain than lose by making the endorsement (after all, he could not endorse the Republican Kimba Brown), there was an element of courage in his endorsement. Bobby Brown must have pushed too hard, misjudging Marco's threshold for humiliation. Juanita, though not an admirer, paid Marco the tribute of respect. And, like all political animals, respect was something Marco craved.

Marco did have one request of our side. He asked Juanita to ask Joshua to allow him face time on Sunday morning with Joshua and the congregation.

Juanita was squeamish about that, and wanted my thoughts. I told her she and Joshua should give Marco a big church welcome and honor him with a covered-dish dinner after church.

"Tell him to bring his wife and children and his photographer. For some reason, he wants to be our ally."

## § § §

By law, the runoff election would take place the first Saturday in December.

We faced the reality that historically, turnout for a runoff election is less than five percent of the registered voters.

But our runoff wouldn't be typical. The "preacher garbage man" was fresh, hot copy. Joshua baffled prognosticators–they hinted to audiences that he might be posing–but they could not resist talking about him; he had style, a message, and consistency. The media herds, all over Texas, were hooked on the novelty of the runoff pairing: two minority candidates, dissimilar in every way except for the label "minority."

And because the balance of power in the upcoming legislative session would be almost equal between the Democrats and the Republicans, our runoff had amped up interest even higher.

Folks residing in all parts of sprawling Houston, ill-informed about their eligibility, tried in vain to vote in the district. Some people drove in from other counties, foolishly hoping somehow to cast a vote in the runoff.

In an unforeseen twist on election day, Foster had to order our poll workers not to take any donations from the public. People who could not vote for him were trying to push donations "for that preacher and his family" into the hands of our volunteers outside the polls.

Foster alerted the team leader at each location, "If anyone tries to give you money or merchandise, tell them Reverend Evans cannot accept contributions, but he suggests donating to a youth charity."

What a frenzied day it turned into, crazier by far than the November general election because the eyes of Texas were focused on our runoff. It was "the story" of the weekend.

## § § §

Stan, Foster and I realized the sight of our faces, Stan's in particular, might hamper the Evans vote-watch party on election night. Joshua and Juanita tactfully agreed.

Pearl was our emissary at the Evans party. Joshua's flock already knew her well. She was recognized and fit in, as a member of the community.

Foster suggested we three misfits share a quiet evening in his penthouse condo after the polls closed. Since he normally avoided home entertaining, the invitation to Stan and me was an honor. It would be just the three of us.

On a couple of past occasions, I had attended functions in Foster's place. Each time, the penthouse had been packed with people, but with Foster himself nowhere to be seen. He had simply donated the venue.

Once it was a wake for an indigent murder victim.

The other occasion was a five-thousand-dollar-per-person fundraiser, jam-packed with movers and shakers. I was not a guest at that soiree, but rather was working, paid by Foster and his partners, or rather their political action committee, to collect the money and identify party crashers.

The crisp December night of the runoff election was my first chance to take a good look at Foster's penthouse with the host present.

The three of us didn't generate enough body heat to overcome the chill inside the stark space Foster had designed as his residence. Except for the lighting, which came from lamps in corners and from beneath the crown molding, the rooms were dark.

I tensed up when I entered. I started to feel the same sense of gloom that enveloped me when I visited the most frightening edifice in Houston, the misnamed Rothko Chapel. Creepier than a morgue or a prison, the Rothko Chapel is a monument to one poor soul's deep depression. My first visit to the Rothko Chapel was my last; its unrelieved bleakness made me feel like I was in a tomb. At first, Foster's place seemed almost as depressing as the Rothko Chapel.

Stan's reaction mirrored mine. I saw him shiver, after glancing about the place. "Man, Foster. This place has more stainless steel than the coroner's lab."

Foster chuckled. "The tamales will warm you up. They are on the way. Any minute now."

His domicile may have conveyed coldness, but Foster's hospitality was warm. Obviously, he wanted to create a happy evening for the three of us to share. Fresh flowers were in the foyer. The carpets were so clean you could almost hear echoes of the housekeeper's vacuum cleaner. The concierge had done a good job of making Foster's condo ready.

My hope for our dinner party here at Foster's place was that the three of us could unwind and be mellow. I knew this would be the kind of night that only comes once.

I was outvoted when it came to watching election returns on television. The guys wanted to take a breather from the day's earlier intensity.

"Folks, I'd like just to sit back and enjoy the view this evening," Foster said.

"Same here," Stan said. "It's out of our hands now. Whatever happens, happens."

"Okay," said our host. "Until the nine o'clock news, we can talk about sports, nature, art, crime fighting, music, or any historical event that happened at least twenty years ago. Or fashion. Nina can talk about the pantsuit she's looking for or, better yet, Stan can tell us about his harem at Magnolia Gardens."

Wine goblets in hand, we gazed out at the downtown skyline. The tops of more than a dozen tall buildings were wreathed in red lights, a December custom. The night was almost cloudless. The view was stunning. The towers looked close enough to touch.

"I'll start with a nature question for Foster," Stan said. "I'm wondering how many herons you think can manage to nest out there on your balcony."

"Interesting you should ask about the herons," Foster said. "I've grown so fond of them that I've listed this place with a broker. I was so aggravated that I couldn't do a write-in for Joshua that I've decided to move into the tin house so I can be a registered voter in the district. Permanently, I mean."

"Are you pranking me, man?" said Stan, who turned to me for verification.

I was so stunned I didn't make a sound.

"Welcome to the neighborhood, man," Stan said, grinning. "Now Pearl can see you every day."

## § § §

Presently, the doorman buzzed to ask whether "the caterer" should be allowed to come up. I was glad we had agreed on Tex-Mex for dinner. The aroma of tamales really would make the space feel cozier.

Foster said he wanted to ask Stan about Joshua. "I know it might be breaking the conversation ground rules, but technically, Joshua was born more than twenty years ago, so indulge me. What I want to know is where the money to keep that little church operating comes from. Who underwrites the House of the Lord?"

"Oh, they take offerings on Sunday and that covers utilities. People who grew up in the church and have moved away send contributions. They have work days when volunteers show up to do maintenance and repairs. Usually, folks Joshua works with during the week help out. I do most of the work on the heating and cooling and some of the electrical work. But mainly, Joshua keeps the church going. I guess Juanita Evans helps now, from her pension money."

I had a question of my own.

"How is it that he seems so much like an ordinary working man, but at the same time he's dignified and mysterious? I think of all he's suffered through in his life, and it staggers me how he seems so serene. And those girls, so cute and smart. A son who's following in his footsteps. Doesn't Joshua have any flaws?"

"Oh, he's not a super saint," Stan said. "And he's sure not serene all the time. He just works harder at walking his talk than most of the rest of us sinners. But just so you will believe he's just as human as the rest of us, I can tell you that Joshua and I had a secret drinking club for a few years. We'd watch football on TV at my place and drink beer. On Sunday, no less. But Joshua swore off alcohol after the drunk killed his wife and daughter and first grandchild. The night after their wakes, I had the bar all set up, ready to tie one on with him. But when he got to my place, he asked for coffee. He was carrying two pies. We ate both those pies that night, and drank two pots of coffee. But no alcohol. We never drank booze together again."

"That story should never be repeated," Foster said, as he filled my wine glass and gazed at me, pointedly.

At that instant, his cell phone vibrated, causing him to jump and dribble wine in my lap.

It was Pearl. She made the call to me at Juanita's request. I took Foster's phone and stepped into the kitchen to talk.

"Nina. We won. We won." Juanita was shouting over the din of voices and music in the background.

I asked how she knew the result so early in the evening.

"Louie Ferguson found out Joshua is the projected winner. Louie called some political science professor he predicts elections. The news will be on at nine o'clock."

"Louie's there at the party with you?"

"Yes," she said. "He's here, with his wife. Joshua wanted Louie here. He's retiring from the TV station. He's taking vacation time the rest of December. He's going to work for Joshua. They just told me two minutes ago."

Well, that meant Joshua would get superb guidance on handling media. It also indicated that Joshua would call his own shots.

Juanita said three members had already called to ask for Joshua's pledge in the contest to be speaker of the Texas House.

"What did Joshua say to them?" I twitched to know how Joshua, apparently now Representative-elect Evans, would decide such matters.

"I have no idea, Nina. I'll try to call you back when I find out. Joshua and Louie are huddled over against the wall right now, talking about it."

## § § §

"Gentlemen," I said, rejoining them in the dining room and handing back the phone. "The sideloader is headed toward the State House. Joshua Evans is at the wheel, with Louie Ferguson riding shotgun."

"Not a bad choice," Stan said.

"More than that. I'd say it was divine inspiration," said Foster.

The evidence indicated that the pair of them had hit the chips and guacamole while I was on the phone. I filled my plate with a couple of tamales and an enchilada.

"Did either of you suggest the Louie thing to Joshua?" Stan wanted to know.

"Not me," I told him.

"Wish it had been I," said Foster. "But the answer is no."

"It looks like our guy is already setting out to be his own counsel," said Stan. "In consultation, of course, with the Man Upstairs."

## § § §

I was famished.

But they weren't. Stan and Foster were giddy and triumphant. I ate while they yukked it up like Cub Scouts on their first overnight campout.

"I can see the two of them, Joshua and history man, walking the halls in Austin," Stan said. "The permanent pols will look at them with shock and awe. Won't know how in hell to deal with Joshua or Louie."

"Right," Foster said. "From behind, as they stride the halls of power in Austin, they'll look like the number ten. One of them is a toothpick and the other is built like a fire plug."

I laughed along with them.

Stan asked Foster whether the Austin environment would change Joshua and Louie.

"I doubt it," Foster replied. "Those two hombres are pretty well set in their ways."

# Chapter Eighteen

The sun's glare off the water was too bright for comfort, so I was wearing dark sunglasses. The morning was balmy, so my windbreaker was for concealment, not protection.

Stan was stretched out on the adjacent lounger.

Unlike most of the oldish men onboard the cruise ship, Stan had no cause to be self-conscious about his physique. I couldn't help but notice, because he was wearing his swim suit. Stan had a working man's body. His arms and hands were brown and leathery, but his shoulders were pale.

"How late did Pearl get back to y'all's stateroom last night?"

"I didn't hear her come in, but it was late," I replied. "I was reading at one o'clock and she was still out. She got up this morning when I did; she said she was meeting some people for a power walk."

Long minutes came and went. Other passengers ambled past, ignoring us.

"Penny for your thoughts," Stan said.

"Wondering how we did it, Stan. I was so busy during the campaign I didn't have time to write in my journal. Other than the video and a few clippings, I don't have anything to put in a scrapbook. But we sent Joshua to Austin, with the best chief of staff in the Texas Legislature. Best ever."

"Ol' Foster was right. He said if you want to make a difference, you've got to be willing to take a chance on looking like a fool."

I chuckled. Stan wanted to know what was funny.

"Foster gave me similar advice, about going on this cruise, except he gave it a different spin. He told me that if I wanted to change my life I would have to take a chance on feeling foolish. Well, his actual words were 'If you want to change the trajectory of your life.' Foster thinks in four-syllable concepts."

"He's an unusual dude, ol' Foster. Told me to make my move on you while the endorphins were still surging. Wonder what he's doing right this minute?"

"Probably relishing our absence," I said.

"Old Foster has paperwork to keep him company. He told me Joshua needs him to evaluate the pre-filed bills. They want to see if they find Harland Warren's handprints on anything. Land-use bills. Tax credits, anything hinky enough to be Harland doing his usual underhanded financial stuff."

"Did you ever catch yourself wanting to win the election?"

He took a momentito to answer.

"I mighta been like ol' Kinky Friedman when he ran for governor. You could see him joking and poking fun at politics until, somewhere along the way, he got a look at himself possibly coming out on top. His whole attitude changed. I let myself have a minute or two of that, kind of my Kinky Friedman moment. So, maybe I did salivate once or twice at the thought of being the Honorable Representative Deleon, but the urge fizzled pretty quick."

# Chapter Nineteen

Knowing this cruise was really an extended first date, I concentrated on how to phrase the question I needed to ask.

"How much do you know about the history of Foster and me?"

"I know y'all go back to when you were kids. There's strong feelings of connection. Sometimes y'all have insider jokes no one else gets. I notice that a lot."

"Did he tell you about the years I spent infatuated with him?"

"I don't think so. No. Wait. Let me think. He said something along the lines of how you got yourself all worked up when you were kids in high school, and that maybe he was immature and hurt your feelings pretty bad."

"Downplayed it. Poor Foster. It was embarrassing for him. He was too sweet to be cruel and just order me to leave him alone. I got so lovesick I stayed home from school, moping and refusing to eat. It was lopsided, extremely one-sided. I realize now that Foster intellectualizes everything, without getting emotionally connected. He's... what? Self-contained? Buttoned up?"

"I wouldn't say that. Seems to me his feelings for you are deep. Hell, to protect you he gave up his law practice."

"No," I said. "That was his own idea. He was tired of kissing ass at the law firm."

"No, Nina. He got his butt handed to him. You could play word games and say he resigned, but however you look at it, they made him leave. Something to do with the legal action he took against Harland on your behalf. I think his bastard partners forced old Foster leave a pile of the money on the table when they showed him the door. By the way, he asked me not to tell you, but to my way of thinking you ought to know."

Stan was right. Some confidences need to be broken, and this was one of those. Should I have felt guilty? Maybe, but I felt no remorse. How could I? Foster seemed to come alive during our campaign that got Joshua elected?

I asked Stan to describe his impression the first time he met Foster.

"I saw him over there on the property at the tin house. I went to my fence line and confronted him. Asked him what he was doing there. My usual welcome when I saw anybody nosing around across the way at that place. He said he was the new owner. Showed me a key. Told me his name. Offered to show me identification. Here's my theory. I think Foster got the tin house as attorney's fees from settling your case. I've got this sixth sense when it comes to fitting puzzle pieces together to get the picture. Comes from so many years being in the cop shop."

Stan was right. The pieces did fit.

## § § §

"I wish you would unwind, honey. Put on a bathing suit and splash around."

"I can't. Not in front of the elephant," I said.

"What elephant?"

I told him the elephant was my uptightness about showing everything, which is what would happen. I disliked admitting that to a hard-bodied man in swim trunks, so I went silent.

I closed my eyes against the sun's rays. I wondered where Pearl was at this moment. Probably in the casino or the gym.

I opened my eyes, squinting through my shades, to see that Stan had covered his head with a towel. He wasn't dozing. I knew because I could see his toes wiggling.

"Hey, Stan. We were talking a minute ago about having no qualms about looking foolish. You know who the poster child is for ignoring other people's opinions? Pearl, that's who."

"What Pearl's the poster child for is the old line that living well is the best revenge. It took Pearl lots of years to get to the point of living well, that's how come she lives it up the way she does. It's also why she gets overly involved in other people's lives, before people are ready to open the door and invite her inside. She barges into their lives and makes herself at home."

"You're right. She's got so much energy, and no end of stories. You couldn't hear it, from your table, but last night Pearl told people at our table she was a stripper in her younger days, and they fell for it. She was funny. Told about how she was afraid to undress when she first started, so she'd take all her clothes off and run."

He uncovered his head and turned toward me.

"I guess it's okay for her to make it into a comedy routine. But it's the truth. It wasn't funny when it happened, that's for damn sure. Back then, before there were topless bars or Hooters, there were strippers. The old man had them working at his drive-in. When one of his strippers didn't show up for work, my old man would drag Pearl out of their apartment under the big screen and force her to fill in. Made her dance around up on top of the snack bar there in the spotlight for a few minutes during intermission, stripping down to her underwear. When the record stopped, she was supposed to take off her bra and stand there for half a minute where everyone could see. Poor thing would stand there wearing nothing but her underpants while car horns honked. Soon as the old man turned off the spotlight, she'd grab her clothes and run back down to their apartment. Mind you now, she was his wife."

"You watched that?"

"Nope. I lived with my mother. My mother told me about what the old man was making Pearl do. When Pearl didn't do it, the old man would hit her. That's why I treat Pearl like royalty."

"I'm glad you do, Stan." I touched his face.

"Don't tell Pearl I told you."

"I promise I won't."

He reached for my hand.

Suddenly, Stan brightened up.

"Speaking of the devil," he shouted. "Look who's coming. Oh, she's not going to stop. Hey there, limbo queen."

Pearl was with a group of women, all pumping their arms as they walked into the wind. She waved as she walked past, but didn't break stride.

A long silence passed between Stan and me. I didn't need to talk, and apparently, he didn't either.

## § § §

His moves since we sailed were unmistakable and yet undemanding. The night before, while Pearl stayed in the club dancing, Stan escorted me back to the stateroom she and I shared.

He asked if I was ready for some alone-together time back in his cabin.

"Not yet." I was being honest. It would have been even more honest if I had told him I was almost ready.

"Then what about a kiss and hug?"

That, I was ready for, and I got it. Being drawn close against him felt warm and delicious. I wanted his goodnight kiss so much that I lunged, almost missing his mouth, making for an off-center touch.

We tried again, connecting better. I felt his chest as he breathed in and out. His mouth tasted minty fresh. I was relieved knowing that mine would, too. I started to feel a loopy longing.

He pulled away, ending the torrid kiss while I still had my mouth open. He lifted my chin so that we were eye to eye, and applied a puckered-up kiss to my cheek.

I was so weak in the knees I started to buckle. He put his hands under my elbows to steady me.

"That's first base, honey. I'm going to go slow with you, but I'm gonna get all the way home with you because I know we both want it to happen. I know you a need a man in your life and now you know I want him to be me. You're a keeper, and so am I."

## § § §

That all happened the night before. Without mentioning our physical encounter, there was a different vibe between us the next day as we sat on the deck holding hands.

After a while, Stan stood up.

"Well, if you're not going to join me in the pool, I think I'll go swim laps. I'll come get you for lunch, okay?"

"That would be great. I want to write a letter."

## § § §

Out of the sun, back in the stateroom, I wrote to G.J.

Your mother has a friend. You could call him a boyfriend. Or lover. He's not like your father or anyone else I ever was involved with.

I believe you two have a lot in common and will like each other when you get home.

It's been an interesting few months, ever since I got that undisclosed legal settlement.

The enclosed newspaper clippings provide more details. As you would say, "It was one heckuva goat-roping."

I think of you always and often, and trust that you are keeping yourself safe.

Love,

Mom

P.S. The gentleman profiled in the newspaper clippings, the one who got elected to the Legislature, wants me to write a book telling how we did what no one believed could possibly be done. I've decided to do that.

