Chapter Two
In which Fee plans ahead.
Fee…
The protest could have gone better.
Most of the media were beside themselves laughing and were already packing up, closing out their reports with cheap witticism and scorn.
The local political types were all but slapping each other on their cheap-suited backs for having sided with the forces of darkness and money, as they made their way to their cars.
The hard hats and delivery drivers got back to work, and at least a few of them had the decency not to gloat.
A few of everyone stopped to take mocking selfies of themselves in front of the mess of well-meaning Uni students and sincere bird lovers who were wearing naughty t-shirts, dripping black muck, and staggeringly pissed by the time Alec Davies had finished with them.
After which he had saluted the press and fucked off, the smile on his face begging to be punched off.
I sighed and rubbed my face in frustration, trying not to growl or mess up my bangs.I couldn’t believe they had accepted those bottles without thinking for a minute where they had come from. Too many hippie drum circles and trips to Burning Man had convinced them they were safe taking candy from strangers.
Yes, the protestors were silly buggers who had in no way covered themselves with glory, but unlike Davies and his lot they wanted to do some good in the world. Cared about things. Cared in a stupid way, maybe, but still.
Besides which they were my well-meaning idiots and I took their humiliation personally.
“Raul,” I said to another member of my coterie who had been with me in the crowd, “can you get to your scooter and follow that asshole?”I pointed after Davies' strangely well-armed motorcade.
He looked around at the drunken chaos of the crowd, “I think so. Provided no one has thrown up on it. What a bunch of lightweights.”
“In this heat, it's not hard to get lagared. If you’re a lightweight,” I conceded.
“Heat, it's fucking freezing this morning.”
Raul was from Mexico City and in a jumper and two cardigans. “Just follow him. Text me everywhere he goes and try not to get frostbite.”
Gathering the rest of my group that were in the crowd and not legless with drink, we spent the next few hours getting the protestors untangled from the fencing, each other, and the mud. I sent Meghan Emily, a dimpled Canadian who knew everything about pollution management and swore she had once punched a black bear in the nose to save her Alsatian from being mauled, to borrow a hose from the building site workers.
She was wearing shorts, they were happy to help.
Raul texted me, “Stopped at pub, not far from protest site,” and included a picture of an old-looking place called the Duke’s Hind. Not the kind of place a Godking would normally go to carouse after subduing some rabble.
When I had shared that eyefuck with him I had been too busy being surprised at how fit and handsome and not troglodytian he’d seemed for a destroyer of the planet. At the same time, I’d also seen how clearly, vastly hungover he was, even though I doubted anyone else had.
And now he has stopped at the first pub he came across. That was interesting.
Douglas, the last sensible member of my group, talked to the few sympathetic media people who had stuck around after the Davies show ended.
Behind me, I heard his soft, Jamaican burnished accent, explaining how fifty thousand pounds might help save some of the delicate, badly endangered Willow Tits that Davies seemed to find so hilarious, but it would do nothing to offset the die-off of wetlands that would be caused by the heat from the servers that would be stored in the new hub. Wetlands that acted as a sanctuary for local wildlife, were part of the national heritage of England, and that helped absorb carbon, making them a part of the planet’s way of cleaning the atmosphere.
A member of a different group, one protesting the negative effects a building of this kind would have on the local economy followed up with hard facts about those jobs the mayor was so happy about and how few would go to anyone in the community.
Raul sent me a second text, “Davies left by himself by Uber. Following.”
Weird.
Meghan returned with the hose, being carried for her by a very talkative hard-hat. I took it from him and made a shooing motion. He tried to keep chatting her up, despite her clearly being too Canadian to tell him to fuck off, so I did it for her.
“Listen, bit-”
I looked up from where I was unspooling the hose and met his eye.
He scampered back to his friends .
“Fee -” Logan, or maybe Lily, so coated in mud I couldn’t tell them apart, whined at me, “I have a headache.”
My phone buzzed. This time Raul sent me a picture of Davies along with a string of question marks.
The Godking was getting out of his Uber in a neighborhood in Blackpool that I only knew from meeting a number of extralegal types there. It wasn’t the roughest part of town - not even close - but it was filled with the kinds of bars and pubs where the clientele listed “drinking to forget” as their employment, and “bad ideas” as their favorite hobby.
“Keep following. Don’t get beaten up,” I sent back.
The workers were on a tea break, most of the media and all of the politicians were gone, as were the crowd and the less silly protestors. For the merest moment, it was quiet and I could see the beauty that had been in the area left undeveloped by the council estate that had stood there before, that could be the whole area again with a little time, and a lot less concrete.
A soft breeze carried the scent of fresh, wet earth, along with the faintly vanilla and wintergreen of the bee orchid, a flower that always made me a little sad, and the sweet, high call of the poor Willow Tit, who deserved more and better than what for Davies amounted to couch change.
I could all but see how it would look if only it could be left alone for a little while, and it made me sick to know we’d lost this one.Never mind, new battles to fight.
“Me, too, I have a headache, too,” the other twin whinged.
I turned towards them and the rest of the protestors and turned the nozzle on the garden hose.
Having been covered in mud rather than glory, the drunken mass submitted to my giving them a rough hosing down, splattering my suit jacket as they flailed about.
Over the roar of the water and the sputtering cries of the now dripping crowd, I shouted, “You need to be careful about who you accept a drink from.”