A Different Light (21 page)

The sidewalk was washed over with rainwater that sped downhill like a swollen stream. Fifty feet ahead, water at the intersection was cresting the curb, the storm sewers unable to hold even one more drop in the wake of the week’s continuous deluge. Bent forward by the fierce wind, Athen tucked in her chin and hoped she’d be able to
tell where the sidewalk ended and the street began. City Hall, though only a few blocks away, was barely visible through the relentless wall of water.

She cursed her high heels and she cursed the storm. The wind lashed wildly at her. Her long hair, as wet as if she’d just emerged from the shower, wrapped around her face so she could barely see. Halfway to the corner, a car pulled up next to her.

“Get in,” Quentin shouted through the half-lowered window.

“I’d rather walk.” She returned the shout without breaking stride. She reached the end of the sidewalk and took a deep breath as she prepared to step into the swirling water.

“Don’t be an idiot.” He pulled over to the wrong side of the street so that he was a few feet from her. “The street is half washed away up there. It isn’t safe to walk. Athen, get in. Let me drive you back.”

She paused at the edge of the curb, unable to tell how deep the water was. Looking up ahead, she could see that the next intersection was fully underwater. A small pickup truck was stranded smack in its center.

Reluctantly, she walked to the car.
No need to rush,
she told herself.
I can’t get any wetter than I already am
.

“Thank you.” She got into the passenger side without looking at him.

“Well, it wouldn’t do to have our mayor washed away in a flash flood so soon after becoming a hero.” He leaned over and turned on the heat, and adjusted the warm air to flow in her direction.

Athen hunched into the seat, grateful for the warmth. She stared straight ahead at the wipers that slashed uselessly at the windshield. Quentin drove slowly, turning
hard to the right in an attempt to avoid the lake that churned in the middle of the intersection. He made a quick right onto a side street.

“City Hall was straight ahead,” she told him flatly. “Where are you going?”

“The street is impassable.” He calmly pointed out the obvious. “I thought a detour might be in order, unless, of course, you’d rather backstroke down Fourth Street.”

He slowed again as torrents of rain rushed wildly down both sides of the street. He took a left and headed up the hill on Ashbridge, but that street, too, was flooding. He turned up Hoffman Boulevard, seeking the highest elevation in the city. If anything, the rain seemed to intensify.

“This is futile.” Quentin pulled into a parking lot behind a convenience store and turned off the engine. Obviously, he was not oblivious to her annoyance at being stuck with him in the confines of his car. “I realize you’re not happy to be stuck with me. I think we’ll have to wait a bit. I’m sorry.”

He pulled back the hood of his dark green parka, allowing his dark damp curls to tumble almost to his eyebrows. Small rivers of water ran down his forehead, and he brushed them away with the back of his hand.

Athen continued to stare out the window, choosing not to respond to his apology. She had more on her mind than the storm. The knot in her stomach had spread. Burning fingers of fear and doubt reached her chest as the enormity of the commitment she’d made came into focus.

Quentin turned on the radio, searching for a station that offered something other than static or hip-hop. He cocked an ear, listening closely as he sped up the dial, then backtracked to tune into something that caught his fancy.

“So.” He punctuated the one word with a drumroll of sorts on the steering wheel.

“Don’t feel that you have to make conversation,” she told him. “I know you don’t want to. It was very kind of you to offer me a ride, and I appreciate it, but you don’t have to pretend to want to talk to me.”

“Fine.” Rebuffed, he turned up the volume on the radio.

Athen folded her hands on her lap and gazed straight ahead. Maybe she should have taken her chances with the tidal wave at the intersection.

Quentin, too, stared out the front window, watching the buckets of water that poured from the sky onto his car. The storm gave no indication that it would subside any time in the near future. They sat like total strangers sharing a bus seat.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to ask. “Why are you so mean to me?”

She watched his reflection in the window but did not turn to face him.

“I’d hardly call rescuing you from a watery grave being mean,” he noted dryly.

“You know what I’m talking about. Every week. Every opportunity. Grilling me. Harassing me.”

“Since when is it harassment for a reporter to ask an elected official for a statement on issues that directly relate to the city she serves?” Cramped in the small seat, he shifted his weight slightly to turn toward her.

“When that reporter knows …”

“When that reporter knows that the elected official in question is duping the people of the city by permitting someone other than herself to make all the decisions—a someone whose motives are decidedly suspect? When
that reporter knows that the elected official in question has no opinions of her own and allows herself to be moved around this city like the queen on a chessboard . . . ?”

“That is not true,” she snapped. “I have opinions.”

“Give me a break, Athen. You haven’t publicly uttered two words that didn’t have Rossi’s fingerprints on them since Labor Day. Now, I have to admit that was quite a convincing little show you put on this morning. I would have fallen for that act myself if I didn’t know that Rossi had carefully orchestrated it.”

“You couldn’t be farther from the truth.” She laughed wryly.

“Come on, Athen, I know the game. You could at least be honest enough to admit that for whatever devious little reason, Rossi told you to make nice with the UCC. Of course, the fun part—from my standpoint, anyway—is figuring out what comes next. Maybe the strategy is for you to make a big show for the press, then have the buildings fail inspection. ‘Well, now, folks, we did our best to help you out, but those old houses just aren’t fit for habitation.’ Is that the plan?”

Quentin’s impression of Dan at his politicking best was annoyingly accurate.

“You are so far off.” Athen leaned her right elbow onto the narrow molding below the passenger-side window and tilted her head as she ran her hand through her sopping-wet hair. “You have no idea.”

“Then why don’t you clue me in?” He leaned back against the car door and said, “If I’m wrong, you tell me what the point was of that little act of yours this morning.”

“It wasn’t an act.”

“Right.” He smirked. “Your compassionate concern wasn’t an act. Your indignation at having been called on it
isn’t an act. While we’re on the subject, though, I thought having the cop break the door down was a great move. Added just the right touch of drama. Was that part of the script or were you ad-libbing?”

“God, but you’re annoying.”

She glanced out the window and took several deep breaths to calm herself as she tried to gauge if the rain had let up enough for her make it back to City Hall on foot, but the wind and water continued their savage slashing against the car.

“Well, I have to admit you’ve piqued my curiosity,” he said. “So if I’m off base, now’s your big chance to set me straight.”

“Rossi doesn’t know. At least he didn’t. Of course, by now I’m sure he does.”

“Rossi didn’t know what?”

“Rossi didn’t know I was going to Fourth Street.”

“What do you take me for?” He laughed. “There’s no way in hell you’d make a move like that without him directing you.”

“Believe what you want.” She shrugged, tired of his ridicule, tired of the effort it took to fight back.

“Convince me.”

“Quentin, I’m too weary for games. I shouldn’t have said anything. Just forget I said anything at all.”

He studied her face for a moment. “You’re serious. He didn’t know you were coming here.”

She continued to stare out the window at the rain.

“It was Ms. Evelyn, wasn’t it? You did it for her. Rossi told you to back off, but she asked for your help and you couldn’t say no.”

She knew she shouldn’t trust him. Past history had taught her that. She could not explain even to herself why
she didn’t keep her mouth shut.

“Bingo,” she heard herself say.

Quentin whistled one long, slow, steady note.

“What happens when you tug on Superman’s cape?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She shrugged. “He’ll try to make me back down. Maybe try to make me resign.”

“Don’t do it. Don’t do either.” His fingers wound lightly around her left wrist.

“I may not have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice. Listen, stand your ground. If you quit, he’ll just appoint another lackey—sorry, but that’s how it looks from here. If you back down, the city will be the same as it was before you stepped into that house with Ms. Evelyn an hour ago. Nothing will ever change. Nothing will get better for those people if you let him force you out.”

The rude stranger with the icy stare had vanished. In his place sat the man Athen had met the previous summer, a man with warmth in his voice and in his eyes.

“You don’t understand how things are.” She could not bear the earnestness of his gaze, the warmth of his hand on her arm.

“I understand much more than you realize.” He looked directly into her eyes, a small smile on his lips. “The only thing I don’t understand is what took you so long.”

“Let’s just say that it took me longer than it should have to see what was really going on. Once I did, I couldn’t
not
do it.” She was suddenly very tired and chilled and wished she was home. “I couldn’t keep those people out on the street. And between my daughter, and Ms. Evelyn, and my own conscience … I had to do something.”

“Now what? What comes next?”

“I have no idea.” She looked down at her hands to escape the intensity of his gaze, and for a few moments the only sound came from the rain and wind outside the car.

“Why did you turn on me the night of the rally?” she asked without looking up.

“Well, since we’re trading truths, I guess the truth is that I was angry.”

“Why?”

“I guess because I thought we were starting to become friends, and I just couldn’t reconcile the woman I thought I was beginning to know with the woman who was willing to be used as a mouthpiece for a man like Rossi. I couldn’t understand why you would agree to such a sham.”

“I didn’t know it was a sham,” she whispered.

“How could you not know?” he demanded.

“I didn’t know
sham
was an option.”

“Oh, come on, Athen. You expect me to believe you agreed to do this for him out of the goodness of your heart? What did he promise you?”

“Nothing. It wasn’t anything like that. Look, I needed to get my life moving again. I needed something to do, and he offered me a job as his assistant. He was an old friend of my dad’s. I trusted him. Then everything seemed to happen so quickly.”

“Well, that’s one hell of a promotion, wouldn’t you say, for a woman with no political experience to go from assistant to top banana in, what, four months?” he scoffed. “It’s obvious what he got from this little arrangement. What did
you
think you were getting out of it?”

“Something to give some direction to my life, and a chance to do something good for the city. At least, I thought I could do something good.” She knew it sounded lame.

“That’s all?”

She nodded.

“Didn’t it occur to you that you’d have to make some concessions?” Had that familiar note of ridicule crept back into his tone?

“I didn’t think of it like that. He told me he’d help me when I needed it. I didn’t know it would be like this.” Why did he insist on viewing her as the villain rather than the victim?

“So you get something to occupy your time for two years at the taxpayers’ expense, and he gets to keep control while he’s waiting to get his office back.” His ability to reduce the matter to its most basic level was not unlike Meg’s, and every bit as infuriating. “Sounds like a damned fine arrangement to me. If you’re Dan Rossi, that is.”

“You make it sound like some shady backroom deal.” What was there about this man that made her feel she needed to defend herself?

“What would you call it?”

“It wasn’t like that. It just sort of … happened,” she said weakly.

He scowled. “That’s what a sixteen-year-old tells her mother when she finds out she’s pregnant.”

“I’m so tired of this,” she said wearily. “Is Dan Rossi really so bad?”
Other than the fact that he slept with an underage girl.
Athen swept that thought aside. Now was not the time to drop that bombshell.

“Rossi epitomizes the worst in small-town politicians.” The handsome man with the gentle blue eyes who only minutes earlier had seemed to understand the truth of the matter began to fade rapidly before her eyes. In a blink, the master of the cutting remark emerged once again to take his
place. “He permitted this city to be robbed of its livelihood, now he holds it hostage while the people get tossed out onto the street. And from where I sit, you’re helping him to do it. You may think you took a stand this morning, but I’m betting that when he catches up with you he’ll manage to turn this around, and you will let him.”

“
Malaka,”
she muttered in Greek to the wailing storm.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means ‘jerk.’”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“There’s a surprise.”

“So we both agree that I’m not perfect. I’m not the one who’s been running this city into the ground. Woodside Heights has some serious problems and I don’t see where they’ve been addressed. The unemployment and crime issues aside, from what I understand there’s a large minority population in this city that has been virtually ignored for the past eight years.”

“Excuse me, there are two minority representatives on City Council,” she shot back.

“Oh, Christ, Athen, give me a break.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You mean Riley Fallon and George Konstantos? Fallon is so grateful to Rossi for putting him on Council he’d publicly kiss Dan’s butt and thank him for the opportunity. And Konstantos is so senile he thinks Bush is still in the White House. That would be Bush forty-one.”