Trust me, if I didn't, I wouldn't be doing this. On the bright side, it wiled away a good hour last night over a small amount of SoCo. As it's intended to be Fan Fiction, I've used the standard rules for writing such: no editing aside from a spellchecker, no going back to check for contiunuity, etc etc. In short, don't expect much, 'cause you ain't a-gettin' it; but I'm out of debt now.


The lighting at the Magic Bean was never much of an issue. Even on an overcast day like this one, the gray light filtering through the windows seemed to take on a pearl-like sheen inside the comfortable walls of the cafe.

"So - don't answer yet -if it turns out that the educational system really is set up to crank out new workers and drones, then it stands to reason that focusing on the teachers as complicit in the problems of modern society makes total sense. Okay, answer now."

Alvin had spent long years learning how to be interviewed. How to hold yourself up, how to evade direct questions, how to circle around the blunt and honest truth. But party bond or no party bond, there were times when he'd rather be facing Hannity, Colmes and Rupert Murdoch all at once than Ferdinand after a few lattes.

"I think it's an interesting idea, Ferd, but ..." Providence came in a black trenchcoat, and with a start he pointed out the cafe window. "Hey, isn't that Datur's ..." He grasped for the correct words, finally falling back on the almost certainly incorrect, "campaign manager?"

Ferdinand didn't seem to even twitch. His body went from facing Alvin to facing the window and back to facing Alvin again, eyes getting wide. "Yeah! What's her name ... Nocticula! Hey, listen, I got to see what she's doing. Hold tight for a minute, I'll be right back."

He was gone before Alvin could even cross his arms over his chest. With a sigh, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked around the Magic Bean. Still no sign of Millie, and the lone barrista was one of those swim team rejects who shaved his legs for better aquadynamics.

Rejects, he thought, that's funny. It was a fact of life, no matter how low you got you could still find someone else to apply the label to. Andrew called it the Kobold Principle. But to call a seventeen-year old athlete with his whole life ahead of him a reject, when your day-planner had nothing on it except "Call twelve-year old re: experience points for owlbears?" Now that, thought Alvin, was comedy gold. Maybe he should have gone in for stand-up. His political career sure made a good running gag.

He stood up to get another cup of coffee, when the photographs on the wall finally caught his eye. Ferdinand had been talking about them earlier, which had been enough to convince Alvin not to give them a second glance. But now ... they were black and whites, which meant there was a chance Ferdinand actually knew what he was talking about.

Wandering over to the first one, he got a small jolt of recognition. The woman in the photo was older, a fixture at the bus stop outside the YMCA. Her face was seamed with age and eras past, but normally it was in constant motion as she kept up a running stream-of-consciousness rant against Eisenhower, the local library, false Christians and occasionally someone named "Bootsy." But in the photo, her face was still, and composed. It was like seeing the final flashes of lightning in the aftermath of a thunderstorm, quiet but powerful; and unaccountably sad. There was no madness in those eyes, just a deep and terrible hurt, a knowledge that the world was made for those younger and more fortunate than she had ever been. Yet she held her head high and unopposed, looking squarely into the viewer's eyes, challenging them to look down on her or push her aside.

The photograph next to it was of a Muncie landmark, the Ten-Cat Diner. Set up in the fifties and home to the small population of Beats in their heyday, the neighborhood around it had slowly but inevitably become rougher, harder-edged. Alvin's campaign workers had always refused to canvass that neighborhood, and he never blamed them or forced the issue. It wasn't a pleasant thing to redline when pushing for Democratic votes, but he couldn't ask his workers to endanger themselves there.

But here was a shot of three men, a line cook, a janitor, and a late-night customer, three cracked mugs and a single flask set round-robin between them, empty sugar packets scattered across open pages of a Sunday newspaper. They were old, and forgotten, and very, very black. But their eyes held the same challenge of their elderly neighbor, daring the viewer to count them out, to sit in judgment from their comfortable and oh-so-trendy Magic Bean.

It was awful, and awesome, in every sense of the word. Every image told the same story, held the same message. Alvin didn't even hear the bell that announced people coming and going until he turned around and saw Millie standing behind him, arms crossed at her sternum.

"Mister Wasserman, are you here to see one of your friends?"

No, he wanted to say, I'm here to see ...

"These are incredible," he said, more out of a need to avoid any revelations than a real desire to discuss them.

Millie's left eyebrow curved perfectly. "You like them? I thought they were pretty sad."

"Well, I guess ..."

Something shifted. The part of Alvin Wasserman that had been touched by these images of the people he so desperately wanted to protect, to defend, to work for and to be worthy of - the best part of Alvin Wasserman rose up in that moment.

"I don't agree," he said, and Millie's eyebrow curved a fraction higher. "I think that they're incredibly hopeful."

"Really." Her arms uncrossed, and she stepped forward, toward the first image that had caught his eye. "Show me."

"I can't. What I mean is, I don't have to," he explained, "if you don't see it in them, if you don't see it in what the photographer has done, then I don't think you can see it at all."

"Humor me."

He swallowed, but lifted a finger to indicate the woman. "Here. She's been beaten down, but she's rising up. She's got something left inside her even after everything else, something that she's still using to fight. Something keeping her alive, even after everything that's gone wrong. She's like some postmodern Lady Liberty, after her torch and crown get stolen, but still standing up to whatever's coming her way. And I know this woman. I mean, I've tried talking with her. She doesn't have that look in her eyes when you meet her on the street. But whoever took the picture caught it, they really captured the whole essence of bowed but unbroken. I wish that I'd had someone like this on staff when I was ..."

"I did."

He stopped talking.

"I did it, Alvin. I took all of these. They're mine."

He nearly stopped thinking. He wanted to shake her, to ask how she could possibly go to the Ten Cat in the hours before dawn, how she could safely take the number twelve bus with a half-moon in the sky, how she could do any of this. Wasn't she thinking? Didn't she realize the danger?

"They're very good," he said. "I, um, I didn't know ..."

"I know," she said. "If you had, it wouldn't have been true. And I would have known. That's why I asked you.

"Do you have a minute to sit down, Alvin?"

He nodded. They sat. And for once, Millie looked nervous.

"I've been thinking. A lot, since ... for the past few days. And I think I figured out what it is that's made this more difficult than it has to be. Alvin, you're not looking for a relationship. You're looking to win at something. And you think that having someone on your arm is going to be a win.

"It's not." Her voice was calm. "Ask any of the divorcees you've worked with. Ask Cassie's mom. Ask my parents. It doesn't guarantee a win, any more than an exit poll does. Everything you've done in your life, you've done with an eye toward winning. And I'm not - no woman is - a prize that you win."

"I never -"

"I bet you didn't. I bet you never thought of it that way. But it's the truth, isn't it? It's one of the reasons you've been alone for so long. Even in that game you play, Cassie tells me that you're - what did she call it? A filcher. Someone who wants to have a little edge. And now, you're going to be actually running for office."

She shook her head. "The hell of it is, I think you'd be good at it, Alvin. I think you have good ideas. And I don't think you want to win just to win. I think you really want to do the right thing by everyone around you, but you have to win in order to do that, don't you? You have to have some level of authority in order to get things working right."

He nodded, almost numb. He'd heard it once or twice before, from therapists or more experienced campaign workers. But never from a girl half his age, sitting below the dark eyes she'd captured so perfectly on film. A black and white jury watching him fail to defend himself against a beautiful slip of a girl.

"And now you say that you wish you had this photographer to work with you. Well, guess what? I'm her. Like it or not, I'm the one who went down and actually talked to my subjects -" the words sounded more queenly than artistic in her mouth - "talked to them, and got their trust, and shot them. Do you understand? It's something I did. And I think you have good ideas. And I want you to win when you run for election."

She put both hands on the table between them. "But I can't. And I won't. Work with someone who's stringing me along. Someone who thinks I'm a prize, or someone who thinks he might win me if he works with me.

"So you have to ask yourself something. Do you want a relationship, Alvin?

"Or do you want to win?"

Her hands stayed on the table, one palm-up, one palm-down; looking for all the world like a bohemian gypsy getting ready to tell a fortune in some campus anteroom. Alvin felt the weight of all those eyes, the eyes of all the men and women he couldn't ask his people to face, all those eyes he couldn't face himself, piling onto the back of his neck. He looked into her eyes, and saw ...

A person. A good person, with a good sense of composition and a good heart. Who made eagles and jackals look like a bad dream, and turned black and white into red, white and blue. A pretty girl. But for the first time, too; as a real person, who had good days and bad, who wept and shouted and threw things when angry, who hadn't always been another pretty girl in another coffeehouse.

He reached across the table with his own hand suspended in between both of hers, palm neither face up nor face down but on the level, ready to take her own not to pat it but to shake.

"When can you start?"


I feel so. Damned. Dirty. Hack! HACK!

Current Mood: I'M A HACK!
Current Music: Probably something by a woman with a guitar.