Black Water Rising

ceremony or politesse, treating him as an old friend. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says, misreading his expres­ sion. “But I’m telling you, this is going to work out better for everybody.”

She offers Jay a cigarette.

He declines, hands in his pockets, keeping himself at a safe distance.

“There is a way out of this mess,” she continues. “A way every­ body can win.” She pushes herself off the front edge of her desk. “We just need the right person to present it,” she says, throwing her voice in a wide, encircling arc, inviting Jay into that We. As if they’re in this one together, comrades again.

He remembers this Cynthia.

The girl who would get hold of an idea and work it, over and over in her head ’til you could see sparks in those blue-gray eyes. He can tell by the look on her face now, the bright flash in her eyes, that she’s sitting on something big.

“Are you going to the port commission meeting tonight?” she asks. “We could really use you on this thing,” she says. “I could really use you, Jay.”

The phone on the mayor’s desk rings. From his perch at the back of the room, Kip answers the line. Jay hears him whisper into the receiver, the words lost in the distance.

“I don’t see why you and I can’t put a lot of shit behind us, Jay,” Cynthia says calmly, almost casually, as if they were talking about something as mundane as an old card game that went sour. “If you came out tonight, if you stood with us, it would send a message to those men, to the Brotherhood camp, in particular, that we’re not— I’m not—out to hurt them. ’Cause I’m not, Jay. I’m not. And you of all people should know that.” She lowers her voice to a sweet drawl. “If you stand with me on this thing, Jay, maybe I can help you out too, you know, maybe get you out of that shithole of an office you call a law practice. I mean, you got a lot of talent, Jay. You just never figured out how to channel it.”

“Fuck you, Cynthia.”

“People listen to you, Jay.” She says it softly, almost wistfully, as if she’s never forgotten in all this time what drew her to him in the first place, as if she’s carried it with her a long, long way. “You just got to remember to speak up.”

“You giving me advice now, Cynthia?”

“I know you, Jay, better than anybody. Don’t forget that.”

He can smell her perfume from here, woodsy and strong. It makes him think of pine needles and red clay, nights in the back of her pickup truck.

“You haven’t forgotten me, have you, Jay?” she asks.

“If only it were that easy.”

Behind him, Kip hangs up the phone and they have an audi­ ence again. The mayor is dry and businesslike all of a sudden. “I could really use somebody like you in this administration, Jay, as a liaison to some of the more diverse communities in the city.”

Jay smiles bitterly at the offer, almost charmed by the audacity of it. So that’s what this is all about? She wants him to be her blackface.

“If you stand with me—”

“Cynthia, I don’t stand with you on anything.”

“Oh, come on, Jay,” the mayor says, quick to her own defense. “You know me. You know where I’m coming from.”

“I know you sold out those men with that press conference,” he says. “You got management hovering like vultures, just wait­ ing for the whole thing to collapse. That’s about all I need to know about where you’re coming from.”

Cynthia shrinks away from him, her voice suddenly stern and cold, that of a woman refused. “Whether you understand it or not, Jay, I’m doing what’s best for those men. Because what’s best for this city, and this city’s economy, is what’s best for those men. When business wins, we all win,” she says, Reagan smiling over her shoulder. Jay can barely resist laughing out loud.

“A strike,” Cynthia says, “is not helping anybody.”

She plops down into the wingback chair behind her desk. The phone rings again. Behind him, Jay hears Kip pick up the line. Cynthia rests her elbows on the mahogany desk. “We’re losing tens of thousands by the day. Another month, we’ll be losing mil­ lions. You understand? This has got to stop.”

“Cynthia,” Jay says, trying to slow her down.

“This is one of the most prosperous times in this city’s his­ tory,” she says, shaking her head somewhat incredulously, as if she’s only of late discovered that running a city isn’t nearly as much fun as she thought it would be. “And I’ll tell you what, the shit ain’t gon’ fall apart on my watch. I won’t let it, Jay.”

“I didn’t come here to argue with you about this,” he says.

He pulls his hands from his pockets, runs his fingers along the dark stubble that’s come up in patches along his jawline over the last few days. He’s shy with his words, which makes him seem more nervous than he intends.

“Is this something to do with the girl?” Cynthia asks.

Jay ignores the question, having decided before he walked in here that he would not say any more than he had to. “What do you know about the federal government storing oil under­ ground?” he asks. “In salt caverns on the coast?”

Cynthia leans back in her chair. “What in the world are you asking me about that for?”

“You were in Washington in the seventies. You were in Bent­ sen’s office.”