Page 65 of Solo

D: Couldn’t you manage to come by for office hours tomorrow?

K: Danger! Danger! Flashing lights, screeching sirens! Armed men with dogs!

D: Oh, for God’s sake. Just say NO next time.

…

Saturday April 1st 3:35 p.m.

D: Are you hearing this?

K: What? The out of tune clarinets or the dragging bassoon player?

D: I was talking about the couple sitting next to you. She won’t shut up.

K: So move.

D: But I want to be near you.

K: You’re sitting in the row behind me. It’s not like we’re together.

D: How can you say that, K? I’m gazing upon your silky tresses…

K: Oh, please.

D: The way they fall in those soft waves down the back of that sassy little sweater.

K: Sassy?

D: Grrrrrrrrrr.

K: WTF was that?

D: Me. Cyber-growling when I think of how long and lean your neck is under that hair.

K: Oh. My. God. Please, make it stop…

D: Holy shit! He just whispered something naughty in her ear.

K: Who? Whose ear?

D: Girl next to you, who else?

K: How can you tell?

D: Because he whispered and smirked and the back of her ears turned beet red.

K: That’s it. No more pseudo-cyber dates for you.

Chapter Thirty-One

Drew

It’s standing room only at the Shepherd University Theater. Every seat is filled, every spare inch covered with camera, sound, and lighting equipment. Television crews are stationed around the perimeters. I’ve managed to squeeze into a row reserved for faculty and staff, sandwiched between a poetry professor in need of a shower and a mailroom clerk in need of a haircut.

Seated around a semicircular table onstage are three politicians who could not look, or be, more diverse. Annemarie Pugliesi, a congresswoman from New Jersey is first in the lineup. Her no-nonsense demeanor is reading as abrasive to the genteel southern audience she’s addressing right now.

Next to her is James Little, the first black governor in the history of North Carolina. He’s fairing slightly better than Congresswoman Pugliesi in that he knows his audience and has no trouble appealing to their southern sensibilities.