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This was it. The moment that could swing the debate, hand Ped Garland victory in the winner-take-all Florida primary, crack the race for the Republican nomination wide open like a ripe pecan.
Or, if the kid – the Ciph – had screwed up one line of data, harvested the wrong cohort, Lawd have mercy.
The question was: What was he was going to do – specifically – about drug traffickers?
He’d gotten this far with his stump lines about the war on drugs failing America’s kids. How the careerists in Washington had tried locking people up left and right, then flipped the script and started talking about reducing harm. All the fancy talk made not a lick of difference. Surveys kept showing one in four young adults using illicit drugs. One in four! It was downright outrageous you could line up four young folks against a wall, and only three would be clean. Or lying. The whole drug situation was like a never-ending billboard of what was wrong with America.
The contest for the Republican nomination started with five candidates. Two dropped out after failing to take any delegates in Iowa or New Hampshire. A third bailed after Super Tuesday, leaving Ped sole challenger to the clear frontrunner, Kate Hunter. But despite throwing everything into the cluster of primaries the following week, he’d fallen further behind and was already being written off by some muck slinging journalists.
The question was repeated: ‘If you become President, Mr. Garland, what will you do about the traffickers?’
He took in the wall-to-wall faces, the red and blue of the CNN banners flanking the auditorium. The spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose glinted in the probing white heat of the spotlights. After a quarter-century of planning, he was about to put everything on the line on the advice of a pimply adolescent with no knowledge of – or interest in – politics.
He adjusted his glasses, pinching the thin metal frames, looked smack-dab at the camera.
‘Lethal injection. A vein for a vein.’
*****
Most people had them. Special places in time, nirvana moments stored away in the memory to be dusted off when needed, wanted, or triggered by some random flashback.
Bec Corelli had fewer than most, but this break in Varkala on the south-western coast of India was definitely a candidate. The main beach and the shacks and stores and eateries and bars lining the path above the dramatic cliffs, the bohemian vibe, all-day warmth, heavenly food and sublime sunsets practically ordained relaxation. Rejuvenation.
And anonymity. No-one in this stress-free oblivion knew, or probably cared, that one of the journalists responsible for uncovering the truth about the Cabo virus was sharing their stretch of sand, haggling over the price of a prayer wheel at the Tibetan market, laughing over the names of cocktails at God’s Own Country Kitchen.
Varkala had been a welcome tonic for Bec’s mental health – an emotional oasis after the turbulence of recent months. Aristotle – the name she used for the color risk scale that helped her self-manage her borderline personality – was behaving.
Green signified the lowest risk of a meltdown. Blue was guarded but manageable. Yellow meant elevated risk. Orange was high, AKA freaking out. Red was bouncing off the walls. Flipped. Unhinged.
Since arriving in Varkala, Bec’s vision, her days, her worldview had been drenched by the swaying greens of the palms above the cliffs, the sweeping blues of the Arabian ocean and unbroken Kerala sky.
Part of Bec could stay here forever. But, as the Walrus famously said in Alice in Wonderland, the time had come to talk of many things...
