Solitude Creek

Hand to Heart

Devoted to raising awareness of

humanitarian tragedies

around the world

How you can help …

‘We don’t take money ourselves. We just make people aware of needs for humanitarian aid, then they can click on a link to, say, tsunami relief or the nuclear disaster in Japan or gas victims in Syria. Make donations. My job is I travel around and meet with non-profit groups, get press material and pictures of the disaster to put on our site. I vet the groups too. Some are scams.’

‘No!’

‘Happens, yep.’

‘People can be such shits.’ She closed the laptop. ‘Not a bad job. You do good things for a living. And you get to stay in places like this.’

‘Sometimes.’ In fact, he wasn’t comfortable in ‘places like this’. Hyatt was good enough for him or even more modest motels. But his boss liked it here; Chris liked all the best places so this was where March was put. Just like the clothes and accessories scattered about the room. The Canali suit, the Louis Vuitton shoes, the Coach briefcase, the Tiffany cufflinks weren’t his choice. His boss didn’t get that some people did this job for reasons other than money.

Calista vanished into the bathroom to dress — the modesty bump was growing — and she emerged. Her hair was still damp but she’d rented a convertible from Hertz and he supposed that, with the top down, the strands would be blow-dried by the time she got to whatever retirement home she was headed for. March’s own sculpted brown hair, thick as pelt, irritatingly took ten minutes to bring to attention.

Calista kissed him, brief but not too brief; they both knew the rules. Lunchtime delight.

‘You’ll still be around for a couple of days, Mr Humanitarian?’

‘I will,’ March said.

‘Good.’ This was delivered perky. Then she asked, genuinely curious, ‘So you having a successful trip?’

‘Real successful, yeah.’

Then, moving breezily, Calista was out of the door.

The moment it shut, March reached over and snagged the remote. Clicked the TV back on, thinking maybe national news had picked up Solitude Creek, and wondered what the big boys and girls were saying about the tragedy.

But on the screen was a commercial for fabric softener.

He put on his workout clothes, shorts and a sleeveless T, rolled to the floor and began the second batch of the five hundred push-ups for today. After, crunches. Then squats. Later he’d go for a run along Seventeen Mile Drive.

On TV: acid-reflux remedies and insurance ads.

Please …

‘And now an update on the Solitude Creek tragedy in Central California. With me is James Harcourt, our national disaster correspondent.’

Seriously? That was a job title?

‘It didn’t take much at all for the panic to set in.’

No, March reflected. A little smoke. Then a phone call to whoever was on duty in the lobby: ‘I’m outside. Your kitchen’s on fire! Back stage too! I’ve called the fire department, but evacuate. Get everybody out now.’

He’d wondered if he would have to do more to get the horror started. But, nope, that was all it took. People could erase a hundred thousand years of evolution in seconds.

Back to the workout, enjoying the occasional images of the interior of the club.

After thirty minutes, sweating, Antioch March rose, opened his locked briefcase and pulled out a map of the area. He was inspired by something the national disaster correspondent had said. He went online and did some more research. He scrawled some notes. Good. Yes, thank you, he thought to the newscaster. Then he paused, replaying Calista’s breathy voice.

‘So you having a successful trip?’

‘Real successful, yeah.’

Soon to be even more so.

CHAPTER 12

The politicos had started to arrive at Solitude Creek.

Always happened at incidents like this. The bigwigs appearing, those in office or those aspiring, or those, like her boss, Charles Overby, who simply wanted a few minutes in the limelight because they enjoyed a few minutes in the limelight. They’d show up and talk to the press and be seen by the mourners or the spectators.

That is, by the voters and the public.

And, yes, occasionally they really would step up and help out. Occasionally. Sometimes. Possibly. (A state government employee, Kathryn Dance struggled constantly against cynicism.)

There were more news crews than grandstanders here at the moment, so the biggest networks were targeting the most newsworthy subjects, like sportsmen on a party boat in Monterey Bay going for the fattest salmon.

Networks. Nets. Fish. Dance liked the metaphor.

The US Congressman representing the district Solitude Creek fell within was Daniel Nashima, a thirdor fourth-generation Japanese American who’d held office for several terms. In his mid-forties, he was accompanied by an aide, a tall, vigilant young man, resembling the actor Josh Brolin, in an unimpeachable if anachronistic three-piece suit.