Black Water Rising

build­ ing, on Bagby. And across the street is a gilded archway leading to Cole Towers, twin office buildings that house the headquar­ ters for Cole Oil Industries. The Cole name, in huge block let­ ters, crowns the two towers, casting a heavy shadow across city hall, falling, at this hour, right into Jay’s lap. He sits beside a large window just outside the mayor’s private suite, where’s he’s been waiting for over an hour.

He folds and refolds his hands across his lap, trying to keep them still, passing the time staring at the framed photographs lined end to end on the beige walls of the anteroom: pictures of the mayor with Vice President and Mrs. Bush; Governor Clements, the state’s first Republican governor since Recon­ struction; even a snapshot of her with Congressman Mickey Leland, a Democrat and former political activist. Jay can dis­ cern no political rhyme or reason to the images on the walls. In picture after picture, in one pastel-colored suit after another, Mayor Cynthia Maddox is shaking hands with Democrats and Republicans, Teamsters and members of the Business League. Everyone has a hand on her in the photos, laying their claim to a woman who ran as a Texas Democrat, but garnered nearly 30 percent of the Republican vote, a woman who spoke vaguely on the campaign trail about her commitment to civil rights but still managed to reassure moneyed conservatives that she could keep their neighborhoods lily-white. In Mayor Maddox, people see what they want to see.

Jay looks at his watch for the third time. The mayor’s secre­ tary gives him a tiny shrug. “I’ll let ’em know you’re still wait­ ing,” she says, pressing a button on the intercom. Then, hearing something, she twists her torso around to look at the mahoganystained double doors leading to the mayor’s suite. She lifts her finger off the intercom button. “Oh, here . . . I think they’re coming now.”

It’s not until the doors open that the weight of the moment finally hits him. His face is suddenly flushed with heat . . . and also the bitter sting of shame. He’s embarrassed to be undone by her still, all these years later. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes his own blood, until he remembers what senseless pain feels like, until he remembers what this woman is capable of.

It’s not the mayor at the door anyway, just another secretary or aide of some sort, a boy in his twenties with a clipboard tucked under his arm and a tie that comes up too short of his waist. He waves at Jay impatiently, as if they’ve been waiting for him all this time. Jay stands and straightens the front pleats of his pants. Slowly, he makes his way through the double doors, dragging his feet as if he’s walking through sand. The boy with the clipboard leads Jay down a short hallway. “Her conference call ran over,” he says. “She’s got about fifteen minutes before she has to be at a luncheon across town. I’d make it quick.”

The boy opens another set of doors at the end of the hallway. A rush of cool air, crisply air-conditioned and sweetened with rose water perfume, hits Jay in the face, along with a lingering hint of cigar smoke, a reminder that this room, the inner sanc­ tum, was once the domain of men.

The current mayor is leaned up against the front side of her desk, dressed in a plum-colored suit, a bloom of frilly white fab­ ric knotted at her throat as if she couldn’t decide between a lace scarf or a man’s necktie. At the base of her legs, covered with thick, nude-colored panty hose, she’s wearing Keds.

“The car’s waiting downstairs,” the boy says.

The mayor waves in his general direction, her head tilted back. There’s a makeup artist, a woman in her sixties wearing a green

lame top and matching eye shadow—whom Jay would probably not trust to put on the face he shows the world—sweeping a pencil across the mayor’s left eye.

It’s quiet a minute, and Jay wonders who will speak first. “I want to thank you for coming,” Cynthia says.

Jay looks down at the thick carpet, fingering the change in

his pockets.

“Your support means the world to me,” she goes on. The presumption irritates him. He’s about to correct her, to explain that she’s misunderstood his reason for coming. He is not here to let her off the hook.

Cynthia keeps her eyes closed while the makeup artist pats powder the color of corn silk onto her nose and cheeks. “What’s the next part, Kip?”

There’s a typewriter going behind Jay.

The boy, Kip, types another line then rolls the paper to the top of the page. “ ‘As this city enters the golden age of its greatest opportunity,’ ” he reads flatly.

“ ‘ As this city enters the golden age of its greatest oppor­ tunity,’ ” the mayor repeats, with some romantic flourish. “ ‘It’s organizations like yours—’ ”

“You’re jumping ahead. That line goes after you say the part about Houston being the fastest-growing city in the nation, the hope of a new decade.”

“I want to open with that. ‘Houston is the fastest-growing city in the country . . .’ blah blah blah . . . ‘and it’s organizations like yours, the Daughters of the Texas Revolution, who maintain our heritage and tradition, our precious link to the past.’ That’s enough, Marla,” she says to the makeup artist.

Cynthia stands upright then, finally opening her eyes. Jay’s is the first face she sees. The smile starts somewhere behind her too-made-up eyes, slowly, like a neon sign kicking on at dusk . . . a few sparks, then light. “How do I look?”

To tell the truth, if it weren’t for her name on the door, he would hardly recognize her. The suit is square and covers nearly every inch of the body he once knew so well, as if she is well aware of its liability in public office.

He cocks an eyebrow. “Daughters of the Texas Revolution?”

Her smile broadens, a spot of mischief behind her docile, coral-colored mouth. It’s this face he recognizes. She angles her head to one side. “Oh, Jay,” she says. Remorse maybe, or else pity, for him, the things he still hasn’t learned.

“Touch it up once before you get to the podium,” Marla says, lugging an alligator makeup bag on her way out the door.

Cynthia nods, waving her off. Then she says to Jay, “I’ll have you know, those ladies gave me five thousand dollars during the campaign.” She crosses behind her desk and plops into an over­ size leather chair. Jay can’t help thinking she looks like a kid playing dress up in her daddy’s office. “ ’Course, they gave the other guy ten . . . but I can’t afford to hold a grudge.”

The other guy was Buddy McPherson, the mayor’s challenger in the general election. A former sheriff and county commis­ sioner, the Big Mac ran a particularly nasty campaign, one that ultimately backfired. Sure, Cynthia Maddox was probably too young to be mayor, with too little political experience—a few years as Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s aide in D.C., then home to serve a year on the local school board and on to the comptrol­ ler’s office—but the Mac’s very public attacks on her intelligence and maturity (repeatedly referring to her as “that gal”) and his frequent remarks on her mannish affect (“Something my grand­ daddy always said: ‘Son, don’t ever trust an unattractive woman; they got way too much to prove’ ”) didn’t go over well with the public. And the fact that on the campaign trail, Mac repeatedly brought up the news that Cynthia Maddox had never married was universally regarded as being in poor taste.

Cynthia picks up the can of Tab on her desk, drinking it through a straw so as not to mess up her lipstick. She looks at Jay and shrugs. “The DOTR are having their annual in Houston this year, and they asked me to speak at