Chapter One
The council president had been speaking for eleven minutes about the need to respect everyone’s time when Cleo began drawing him as a parking meter.
She gave him a narrow coin slot where his mouth should have been. That helped. Across the chamber, beneath a portrait of a former mayor whose painted hand rested on a book nobody had ever identified, the man himself continued explaining why the remaining residents would have to wait until the next meeting to speak. Cleo darkened the little flag above his head. EXPIRED.
It was almost ten. The woman beside her had put on lipstick before coming, a plum color, carefully applied, that had crept into the lines around her mouth. Her coat lay across her knees. Every few minutes she checked a folded sheet of paper, although Cleo suspected she could have recited it by now.
At the far end of the council table, Alec Renshaw leaned toward his microphone.
“We extended the presentation for the developer. We can extend public comment.”
Cleo knew his voice better than the voices of several people she loved. Low and slightly rough, it made an objection sound reasonable before she’d considered it. She distrusted how often she agreed. Then there were the sleeves, rolled far enough to make a virtue of his forearms. She’d given him a pair in three different cartoons.
The president touched his microphone. “The presentation was scheduled business.”
“These people were scheduled business when you asked them to come.”
Three rows ahead, somebody clapped once. The president looked toward the security officer at the door, then back at Renshaw. Cleo added a parking ticket to her drawing.
The item concerned the old municipal laundry on Calder Street, a brick building beside the river that had been empty long enough to acquire saplings in its gutters. Bracken Homes wanted to buy it, tear it down, and build apartments. The apartment building beside it, where the woman with the plum lipstick lived, shared an access road that would become a construction entrance. The plans included a new entrance for residents. They did not show where anyone would walk while it was being built.
In the architect’s rendering, all the pedestrians were young. One carried a yoga mat. Cleo had spent an unreasonable amount of the presentation hating that woman.
Beside her, the folded paper made a dry little sound.
“You should go home,” Cleo whispered. “I’ll stay and tell you what happens.”
“I’d like him to look at me.”
The woman said it without self-pity. She was wearing good shoes with buckles and had arrived before Cleo. A wheeled shopping bag stood between her feet. At the long table, someone was already putting the caps back on the bottled water.
She set her sketchbook aside.
“Would you mind saying that again? On camera?”
The woman considered her. “For the newspaper?”
“If you’re willing. You can say no.”
“Get my good side.”
“Which one’s that?”
“At my age you pick one. You can’t keep shopping around.”
Cleo held up her phone. Before the woman could speak, the president struck his gavel and announced that recording by members of the public was prohibited under the chamber’s new media policy.
“She’s recording me,” the woman called. “I said she could.”
“Ma’am, please.”
There it was, that particular use of please. Cleo had been listening to men say it all evening. He wanted the woman back in her seat, preferably sorry she had spoken. She kept the phone raised.
“You’ve got a camera on the back wall,” she said.
“The official recording is available through the city website.”
“Does it include the people you won’t let speak?”
The security officer moved away from the door. He was younger than she was. The edges of his wedding ring still looked sharp. Knowing him didn’t make it easier to put the phone down.
“Cleo,” he said, stopping beside her row. “Come on.”
She’d drawn his father for a retirement card last spring. Dunmere was big enough to have political enemies and small enough for their children to know where you bought your milk.
At the council table, Renshaw was reading the printed policy.
“This hasn’t come before the council.”
The president ignored him. “Ms. Pritchard, put the phone away.”
“Can she speak?”
“We’re moving on.”
Cleo stood. The officer’s hand hovered near her elbow. She switched off the recording, slipped the phone into her bag, and picked up the sketchbook. She could still have sat down; she would admit that later. But the president turned to his neighbor with such bland satisfaction that she held up the drawing instead.
The back rows laughed. The woman beside her laughed hardest of all, a surprised, delighted bark that made the trip almost worth it.
“Out,” the president said.
Renshaw pushed his chair back. “For God’s sake. She’s been here since six-thirty. Let the woman finish.”
“Councilman Renshaw, you will observe the chair.”
“I have been observing the chair for four hours. It’s been a fucking education.”
For a second the chamber was silent. Then the laughter and objections broke over each other. The president called a recess. Cleo was already in the aisle when Renshaw came through the gap beside the table, gathering his papers into an untidy pile.
Outside, April rain glittered in the light above the city hall steps. Under the stone overhang, Cleo tried to fit the sketchbook into her bag. A corner kept catching on the zipper. She could hear Renshaw behind her, apologizing to the security officer.
“You don’t need to apologize,” the officer said. “Just make my job easier next time.”
“Fair enough.”
The door closed. For a moment they listened to the rain.
“You got thrown out,” Cleo said.
“I was asked to reconsider my participation.”
“Is that what you’ll put in the press release?”
He turned. Up close, he looked more tired than he did on the council’s webcast. There was a nick beside his jaw where he’d cut himself shaving, and one side of his collar had folded under. She hadn’t allowed for these things in the drawings. He was handsome in the drawings too. She had kept his face smooth, the better to make him look pleased with himself.
“You’re Cleo Pritchard.”
“You sound as though you’re identifying a rash.”
“I’ve had less persistent rashes.”
She hadn’t meant to find him funny. He was plainly pleased, which gave her a fresh reason to withhold judgment.
The doors opened again. The woman with the shopping bag emerged, escorted by two neighbors. Renshaw went down a step to meet her.
“I’m sorry. That was appalling.”
“Which part?”
“Most of it.”
She held out her folded paper. He took the page in both hands, careful of the fold, and asked how she was getting home. One of the neighbors had brought a car. He wrote his number on the meeting agenda and gave it to her, promising to call in the morning about an access plan. Cleo watched him make the promise. Over the years she had drawn promises as bad checks often enough to wear the joke out.
The woman turned back to her. “Did you get any of it?”
“Only you asking me to find your good side.”
“Well, don’t publish that. My sister will have opinions.”
They waited while she negotiated the steps. Renshaw held the shopping bag. Nobody photographed him doing it. Cleo noticed, and wished she hadn’t been watching for it.
When the car pulled away, he opened the folded page. The handwriting was large and slanted, blue ink pressed hard into paper.
“She has a husband on oxygen,” he said. “They need the pharmacy delivery to reach the door.”
“Your motion to postpone the sale didn’t mention that.”
“My motion was two lines long. The supporting material did.”
He said it without accusation, leaving her with nothing to argue against.
Across the street, the kebab shop’s sign was still lit. She could smell grilled onions whenever the wind shifted. Her stomach interrupted before she could ask another question.
“That was eloquent,” he said.
“I’ve been saving my public comment.”
He tucked the woman’s letter into his jacket. “I’m getting food. You can come if you’d like.”
“Are you buying?”
“Would that compromise you?”
“Depends how good the fries are.”
“We can get separate receipts,” he said, letting the invitation stand.
They ran across the road through rain that seemed determined to get inside her collar. In the shop, he held the door while she shook water from her hair. A man behind the counter greeted him with a lift of his chin, then began wrapping something without asking what he wanted.
“How often are you here?” she asked.
“I’m going to say once a week. Be kind enough to believe me.”
She ordered fries and a chicken wrap. They paid separately and sat at a small table beside the window, his knees nearly touching hers beneath it. Outside, water ran down the bronze face of the city’s founder. The shop’s television played a cooking competition with the sound off.
“I have one of yours,” he said.
She looked up from opening a packet of ketchup. “One of my what?”
“Cartoons. Framed.”
“Please tell me it’s in a downstairs bathroom.”
“It is, actually.”
“Of course it is. That’s where men hang evidence of their excellent sense of humor.”
He smiled, but his eyes stayed on her. “Where should I hang it?”
“Over your bed. Reflect on it nightly.”
“My romantic life is difficult enough.”
Heat rose into her face. She bent over the ketchup packet. He reached for the vinegar. His left hand was bare. She noticed before she could pretend she hadn’t looked.
“Which cartoon?” she asked.
“The snowplow.”
“That was a good one.”
“It was.” He reached for the vinegar. “I kept the ladder too.”
She remembered it at once. Renshaw climbing a ladder toward the mayor’s office, pulling the lower rungs up behind him. Below, people reached for the spaces he’d left. She’d drawn it after his vote to delay a city housing purchase, a vote she’d read as an attempt to deny the sitting mayor a success.
He didn’t explain why he’d kept it. He tipped vinegar over his fries without looking up. Behind the counter the fryer switched on. Neither of them spoke.
“Was it unfair?” she asked.
He waited for her to finish chewing. She wished she’d waited before asking.
“I’d rather you read the papers and decided.”
It wasn’t the answer she’d expected. He took out his phone, asked where he could send the committee report, and waited while she gave him her work address. His message arrived before they finished eating.
At the door he stepped aside, and her wet sleeve brushed his shirt. They’d sat so close at that table. She could have put a hand on his knee. Under the fluorescent lights, with ketchup dried on her thumb, she was suddenly shy of him.
“Good night, Cleo.”
On the walk to her car she tried to think of something she should have said. By the time she got there, she was less interested in a last word than an excuse to speak to him again.
