by Ken Douglas
The camera left them and came back to Dani.
“ What you see behind me,” she said, “is a village that works. People here contribute. They help their neighbors, grow their own crops, tend their own cattle and raise happy children like Amanda.” She bounced the girl on her knee and the child giggled. “But it wasn’t always that way. Before Save the Children got involved there were no crops to tend, no cattle to herd, no happy children. Amanda was sick and wasting away, her parents had no food or shelter, they’d already lost two children and Amanda was close to being the third. Then you helped through Save the Children, but we can do so much more. So if you’re not one of our sponsors, please help. You can do so much for just pennies a day.”
The camera pulled in for a close up and Dani reached a hand to her forehead and pushed some hair out of her eyes, then she wiped away a tear. “We need your help. Amanda needs your help. I need your help.” Then the screen faded to black.
“ I can’t believe it,” Broxton said.
“ A powerful ad,” Warren said.
“ Better than any I ever wrote. I almost started crying when she wiped that tear away,” Broxton said.
“ She’s the perfect spokesperson. She’s doubled the income for Save the Children in less than a year and she’s hoping to double it again.”
Broxton stepped toward the pictures on the wall behind Warren’s desk. “A who’s who of world politics,” Broxton said, as his eyes moved from a picture of Warren and the President of the United States to one of him with the Prime Minister of England. “When was the one of you and Aaron Gamaliel taken?”
“ In Paris. Dani took it. A few hours later he was dead.”
“ Killed by the Scorpion,” Broxton said. Aaron Gamaliel had been the Israeli Defense Minister. “Him, too.” Broxton pointed to a picture of Dani and President Jomo Seko of Zaire.
“ He was assassinated while she was up country doing one of the those commercials for Save the Children,” Warren said.
“ Poor Dani,” Broxton said. “It must have been horrible to have been with two such men hours before they were assassinated.
“ She’s had horrible nightmares about it,” Warren said. “It’s really shaken her.”
“ I won’t mention it,” Broxton said.
“ God, I hope not. She’s just starting to act like her old self again. Let’s just say you’re here on vacation.”
“ That’s my cover story,” Broxton smiled. “I’ll stick with it.” He was quiet for a second. “You’re right, Save the Children couldn’t have found a better spokesperson. I can hardly wait to tell her how proud I am of her.”
“ You can do it over dinner. You’ll be staying with us, of course,” Warren said.
“ How’s the palace, Street?” Broxton said. It was pointless arguing, Warren always got his way.
“ It’s just a simple home,” Warren said.
“ Warren, if you’re living in it, it’s a palace.”
“ I have brought over a few of my little luxuries,” Warren said, and laughed.
“ Like the grand piano, the walk-in wine cellar that’s bigger than a garage, and the drive-in movie screen that you call a television.”
“ Well yes, I brought those.”
Broxton followed Warren out of his office and through the embassy to the garage in back. He watched as Warren ran his hands along the walls as they went from room to room, almost like he was trying to reassure himself that he wasn’t dreaming, that he really was out of the Washington mad house. Broxton knew that Warren loved being Ambassador to Trinidad as much as he’d hated being National Security Advisor.
In the garage Warren went to the driver’s side of a two-year-old left-hand-drive Ford, and Broxton was reminded about the left-hand-drive car that had run them off the road.
“ What happened to the Silver Cloud?” Broxton asked, looking over the roof of the car at his friend.
“ Left it at home,” Warren answered.
“ That’s not like you,” Broxton said.
“ This is still a third world country. It wouldn’t do for the American ambassador to go driving about in a Roller.”
“ Doesn’t Dani miss it?” Broxton was looking at Warren over the roof of the car. Warren Street was still as handsome as ever, his jaw still firm, his eyes still crisp. He was fifty-four, rich, an American ambassador, Dani’s father and his best friend.
“ Miss the Rolls? I don’t think so. She always thought it was a bit conspicuous. Thinks my left-hand-drive Ford is, too. She usually endures the press and grind of the maxi taxies.”
“ What?”
“ You’ll find out about the maxies soon enough. Yellow mini vans, they cram as many people in them as possible and zoom up and down the streets at something just short of the speed of light. It’s like a local bus system.”
“ And Dani rides in them?”
“ Every day. She’s become quite a woman, my daughter.”
“ Do I hear a but in there?” Broxton said.
“ I hate it that she has to travel so much. She used to enjoy spending the new money. I loved it. We’d go out and just buy things, rich is so much better then poor. And then she made a pile in her own right, but now sometimes I think she’s ashamed of all the money. I think it’s why she goes traipsing all around the third world.”
“ It looks like she does good work,” Broxton said. He was proud of her and it pleased him. He’d always loved her, but he could never remember a time when he’d been proud of her. She’d always used her ruthless beauty and fierce determination to get ahead. Now she was applying her looks and will for the benefit of others and it made Broxton feel good.
“ I can’t argue with that,” Warren said. “I love her, but I’ll never understand her. You know she works in the embassy four days a week for no pay. She’s my unofficial press secretary. Nothing goes out of that place, without her looking it over first, and if it looks like it might harm me in any way, ever, she cuts it. You can’t believe the amount of paperwork she wades through just to make sure my image isn’t tarnished. As if I really cared about my image.”
“ Nobody will ever understand her.” Broxton sighed. “That’s what makes her so unique.” The two men climbed into the car. Broxton settled down into the passenger seat. He thought about the story in the newspaper, but he was afraid to bring her up.
“ She’s always loved you, Bill, but I think you waited too long,” Warren said, bringing it up for him.
“ She looked happy in the picture,” Broxton said. He didn’t have to tell Warren what picture.
“ It happened so fast.” Warren took a right out of the driveway and headed for the long cool ride around the Savannah. “One minute she’s the social butterfly of Trinidad, then Kevin starts acting serious all of a sudden and the next thing you know they’re an item, and I mean an item. Kevin must eat at our place five nights a week. Not my favorite person in the world, but he’s okay.
“ Kevin Underfield, the guy with the flask on the plane. I saw it in the paper.”
“ Yeah, him.”
“ Sounds like a mortician.”
“ Used to be a newspaper reporter, now he’s working with Chandee, helping him modernize the police force. Comes from a good family. Big bucks,” Warren said. Broxton smiled. Despite his wealth, Warren still thought like a middle class kid from Long Beach.
“ She knew him from before?” Broxton asked.
“ She was his agent.”
“ He wrote a novel?”
“ No, he wrote that book defending the Hezbola. Said it was their right to take hostages. Claimed they had just as much right to torture and kill their captives as those early American terrorists had dumping tea in the ocean. His words, not mine.”
“ I remember now, he was on all the talk shows. The guest everybody loved to hate.”
“ That’s him. Only he’s not that guy you remember from television. He’s tamer now, talks like a scholar.”
“ I remember him on Cross Fire. He seem
ed more like a rabid dog than a college professor.”
“ That was all Dani. Theatrics to sell his book. Remember how she used to be?”
“ Yeah.”
“ She spent a lot of time with him in Lebanon, helping him with the second draft. I think the book was as much Dani as it was Underfield,” Warren said.
“ I didn’t know that,” Broxton said. He’d lost touch with her during his marriage. While she was making her mark on the world, he was wallowing in a dead end job with a woman that wanted his boss more than she’d wanted him. Dani was making her fortune while he wrote bad copy for bad ads touting bad products.
“ He can’t write. Dani can. His thoughts, her talent. It was a controversial book. Did well.”
“ I read it,” Broxton said. “I thought it was a load of crap.”
“ Yeah, well I guess I did, too, but one good thing came of it.”
“ What’s that?”
“ After that horrible book tour was over Dani lost all interest in making money. She sold the agency and came to work for me in Washington.”
“ National Security Advisor to the President of the United States,” Broxton said. “Pretty important job.”
“ Yeah, well I was kind of tired of it. My heart problem was a good reason to walk away.”
“ Big job to walk away from.”
“ Not when you don’t see eye to eye with the boss.”
“ I thought you two got along great.”
“ We did, we do. He listened to everything I said. Then most of the time he went and did the direct opposite.”
“ He’s the one that has to answer to the voters.”
“ So he’s told me. More than once.”
“ You going back?”
“ Next year, but not in an official capacity. I’ve had my fill of that. I’ll just sort of hang around and nag at him when I think he’s screwing up.”
“ You can do that?”
“ Probably not. He wants me for State in the second term.”
“ You’re shitting me?”
“ No.”
“ That’s pretty official.”
“ If I take it.” Warren slowed the car and turned up a circular driveway and parked behind a red Porsche convertible. The porch light was on, the front door was open and the light inside the house framed Dani in the doorway. She was wearing a white silk blouse and faded Levi’s. She wasn’t wearing shoes.
“ We have company,” Warren said.
“ Billy Boy,” Dani squealed.
“ Dani,” Broxton said, and she was in his arms, squeezing tight. She gently bit into his neck, as she used to do when they were children, and he answered her squeeze with a bear hug of his own, pulling her off the ground and twirling her as if she was still a little girl.
“ No Kevin tonight?” Warren said, after Broxton had set her down.
“ He bought me a car.” She pointed to the Porsche.
“ Kind of fancy for the proletariat,” Warren said, kidding, but she wasn’t laughing anymore and Broxton looked into her eyes, clear as cut glass, and shivered. For an instant he thought he caught a glimpse of wild desperation. Then it was gone and she looked hard, old beyond her thirty-six years. Tiny crows feet crinkled out from those eyes, long eyelashes adorned them, a hint of baby blue eye shadow covered their lids. She’d been driven when she ran the literary agency, but never desperate. She’d been ruthless, but in a soft kind of way, never hard.
“ It’s been a long time, Bill” she said.
“ Almost two years,” he said, relaxing as her stare mellowed into a welcoming smile. This was the Dani he knew, the Dani he loved.
“ A lot can happen in two years,” she said.
“ I saw the television commercial for Save the Children. I was proud of you.” He wondered if that was it. Sure, he thought, seeing all those poor kids in those poor countries would harden anybody. His heart went out to her.
“ Thanks, I enjoy helping out and it’s made Daddy proud of me.”
“ I’ve always been proud of you, dear,” Warren said.
“ Not always,” she said, and Broxton thought of her literary agency.
“ Always,” Warren said. “You proved you can be a success in a tough field. What father wouldn’t be proud? Then you gave it up and came to work for me and made me even prouder. I’ve always felt like I’m the luckiest man alive.”
Her smile toward her father was warm and genuine, her eyes now a window to the Dani of old. She was a little girl pleased that her father was proud, then something happened, her eyes appeared to glass over for a second, like her mind was elsewhere. He sensed that she wanted to be somewhere else, that she had other plans, that he was interrupting, intruding.
“ I’d love to sit up and talk the night away, but I’ve been up for the last twenty-four hours. I’m about to pass out.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but he wanted to give Dani time to adjust to his being in Trinidad and he needed time to adjust to Dani engaged to someone else.
“ Of course,” Warren said. “Your room is at the end of the hall.”
“ Wait,” Dani said, sharp, quick, almost a shout. Broxton stopped, set his bag down and met her eyes. “Not that room,” she said.
“ Why not?” Warren said.
“ I think he’d be more comfortable upstairs with us. Not down here like a guest.”
“ But I am a guest,” Broxton said.
“ No you’re not. You’re family.”
“ It’s a better room,” Warren said, “with a bigger bath.”
“ No, Bill should stay upstairs, with us, not in the stuffy guest bedroom.”
Warren shrugged, looked at Broxton and smiled. It was a good sign, Broxton thought. She wanted him upstairs, close to her, not on the opposite end of this big old house.
“ Upstairs is fine, as long as it’s got a bed. Who needs a large bath anyway?”
“ Then it’s settled. Follow me, Bill.” She spun around and started for the staircase.
“ She always gets her way,” Warren said.
“ She always has.” Broxton picked up his bag and followed her up the steps and then into a large bedroom with a king-sized bed.
He set his bag at the foot of the bed and peered into the attached bathroom. “This is about the size of my apartment in D.C. and you say the one downstairs is bigger. I’m beginning to feel slighted.”
She laughed and he enjoyed the sound. Now she appeared open and vulnerable. He wanted to ask her about the story in the newspaper, but he was afraid that it would spoil this moment between them.
“ It’s good that you’re here, Bill,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
“ I’ve missed you, too,” he said.
“ Look, I’ve got some things I have to do tonight that I can’t get out of, so why don’t you get some rest and tomorrow maybe we’ll go sailing.”
“ Sounds good to me,” he said. Then she was gone. He looked over at the bed. He was tired. He felt the mattress, firm, comfortable. He stretched out on it without removing his clothes. He’d only intended on a few minutes rest but in seconds he was asleep, dreaming of Dani, the ring in his pocket, and the desperation in her eyes.
Chapter Nine
Earl woke to the smell of his own sweat in the tall grass. Shivering, he brushed an unseen insect off his neck as he sat up. He looked to the sky, now covered in clouds. It was either very late or very early. He checked his watch, 5:30. He felt a sharp pain at the base of his skull. He ran a hand back there and found a large bump. It wasn’t cut, and for that he was thankful, but it hurt.
“ Are you okay, mister?”
He turned toward the sound of the voice.
“ I thought you were dead, but I felt your neck pulsing, like they do on TV, and I knew you weren’t.”
The insect was this boy’s finger searching for life.
“ That’s good,” the boy said, “’cause I sure didn’t want to get the police.”
“ Why not?” Earl asked. He was cold and wet. His
body ached from the thrashing it had taken in the river. His head felt like it was being used as a snare drum, and he had to piss like a pent up storm, but he’d been too many years a cop. He wanted to know what a child was doing out by the river, so far from town, alone.
“ I’m running away from home,” the boy said.
Earl’s skin crawled and he shook with the cold. “Not very warm out,” he said.
“ Don’t I know it,” the boy answered. “It rained while you were asleep, but the sun will come back. It always does.”
“ Your parents must be worried.”
“ They’re getting a divorce. They don’t care about me.”
“ How long do you think you can live out here?”
“ Oh, a long time. I got a two man tent and a sleeping bag over there.” He pointed toward the falling sun peeking through the clouds. “I got enough canned goods for a couple of weeks and I got friends that’ll sneak me more when they run out. I can stay hidden forever.”
“ It sounds like you’ve thought of everything.”
“ I’ve been planning a long time,” the boy said. Then he added, “Are you hungry?”
“ Powerfully,” Earl said.
“ I thought you would be. I saw you climb out of the river. Then you crashed. I thought you might be dead.”
“ I’m not dead,” Earl said.
“ My name’s Mick,” the boy said. “My mom named me after Mick Jagger. He’s in the Rolling Stones. That’s a rock band.”
“ I’ve heard of them,” Earl said, smiling despite his suffering body.
“ Can you get up? Can you walk?” Mick asked.
“ I think so,” Earl said, and he pushed himself to his feet.
“ Okay, follow me. We’re having hot dogs for dinner.” The boy walked with a self assured swagger. He was at home by the river and Earl guessed that he was a veteran of many camping trips with his father.
He groaned when he walked, but the boy didn’t look back. He ran a hand over a pain in his side and winced when he remembered slamming into a rock. He flexed his fingers, then his toes, then ran his head in a circle. Everything ached, but everything seemed to be working.