“I do enjoy it. I enjoy the hunt. Exceeding capacity. Winning in court occasionally actually is fun, now. Except for the cost.”
“I’m not reducing my fees.”
“Wasn’t asking.”
“You’re forty-five?”
“Watch it. Forty-three.”
“Time to start raising a family, or raising someone else’s family. You know lots of good men who never came back, their wives are good women, Marco. Doing the best they can. Go pick one, get married, and fulfill the dreams of someone else’s you respect. Raise the kids to love their father. And learn to be one. I’m going to personally go out on a limb and say all these things, because after all the wars are over, you know what we have?”
“Not sure what you’re saying.”
“We have a country to come home to. Some people don’t have that.”
“Tell me about it. I’m headed to one soon.”
“I can’t even imagine what that will be like, taking care of those boys who have been raised in a pink palace. Kids who spend more money on their shoes than some of those people they will be working with earn their whole lifetime. Do you think what they’re doing will make a difference?”
“Oh, hell yes. They need housing.”
“If they can keep it privately held. Until some new warlord comes into power and takes everything away or blows it up.”
“You’ve been reading too much, Bob,” I said as I stood, and shook his hand. “And the answer to your question is it’s just like the graffiti problem.”
He angled his head and furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand.”
“The secret to getting rid of it is to keep painting over it over and over again. They put it up, you take it down. You know when you’re taking it down that they’ll tag it again, but you keep doing it. Someday, they grow up, or move, or go elsewhere, and it starts to change. Some day. We got to keep thinking about someday. The sultan will build these houses, and yes, some of them will get destroyed. But someday someone else will build houses, and then maybe another, and eventually, someday they will be allowed to stand. There will be houses to pass down to their kids and grandkids. And the people won’t live in fear anymore.”
“God dammit, Marco. You’re a fuckin’ optimist.”
That was funny. I laughed. I’d never thought that about myself. And then it hit me, I believed in the Happily Ever After, like those books Emily used to read. I knew that someday everything would turn out.
‘It will be okay, kid.’
Chapter 22
Shannon
I was rushing to get to makeup in time for my first afternoon report. There was a big storm coming, and people would be tuning in to find out where it was going to land.
Sandy commented on how tanned I’d been. “You are spending a lotta time outdoors. It’s good for you, Shannon. Your skin is lovely today.”
“I’ve been watching what I’m eating, and yes, been taking more walks on the beach.”
“I used to do that when I was younger, too. You get older, and you just don’t do those things any longer.”
“I plan never to stop.”
I had started to feel better with each passing hour. Day by day, I found meaning in Marco’s project, I enjoyed the crazy people at the station more, even that bastard Clarence Thompson. We even openly pretend-flirted on the air, since we both knew if he tried anything, he’d get fired, and at his age he was probably unemployable. And I saw him with new eyes. I saw the vacant part of his life. The guy was lonely.
‘I guess it takes one to know one.’ My mother used to say that all the time. Emily used to tease me with that when I called her a rat, or a cheater, or when I tried to take the biggest piece of cake. Funny, I had forgotten how much we actually did fight over little things. In the wash that was necessary to heal my heart, what also was lost were those little details. I tended to think of her as perfect, of our childhood as perfect. But she could be a little shit, too. I took it as a good sign, that a lot of things were healing inside me. My internal housekeeping was redecorating, freshening up the curtains, recovering couches and painting the walls a different color.
I stepped onto the set, adjusted my microphone and squinted at the teleprompter. I hoped that this didn’t mean my eye surgery was failing. I blinked several times, and the letters got clear, and larger.
“Well now we come to my favorite part of the day. We have Shannon Marr here to tell us what’s coming up along the gulf. You have any fun plans for this weekend?” Clarence asked, winking at me, daring me to say something racy.
“Just some good beach time, Clarence,” I answered.
“Oh darn,” he said as he clicked his fingers. With his hand up to his mouth, as an aside to the audience, he whispered, “At my age the only way I get my thrills is by listening to her talk about her boyfriends.”
Someone had turned the canned laughter off. Clarence looked up above him, as if he’d been suddenly covered with bugs.
“Hey, I thought that was funny! Oh, well, give us the weather, Shannon.”
“Thanks so much. Well…” and then I began moving my hands in front of the green screen, watching the monitor to make sure I didn’t worry all our Tampa Bay people by misplacing the eye of the next storm smack on their town, instead of well out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. I did that once and the newsroom was flooded with panicked calls.
“And that about wraps it up. Oh, and we have a special programming note
