Page 31 of The Dreidl Disaster

He was a grown man who did this for a living. She’d researched him; she’d even spent time with the man, and she was able to tell he was damn good at what he did.

Why did she want to shield him? He wasn’t an innocent little thing that needed her protection.

And yet all the same, she found herself wanting desperately to give it to him.

*

Artur was notsurprised when Liv met him at his car. She’d already given the signs of ‘there lies danger’ at this meeting. Which meant she was going to play bodyguard.

He’d actually worry if the local police or someone wearing protective armor had showed up to actuallybea bodyguard, but now? It was enough that she was worried; two sets of worries would upset the applecart and then there really would be trouble.

But all the same, he followed the mayor into the night, then into the building, down the hallways to a small room with a desk and bulletin boards where there were instructions on how to apply stage makeup.

He’d wondered where the saws used by the prop makers were; tension in the room was thick enough to create sawdust on the floor. The mayor was pacing and he was about to get whiplash.

“The plan is that they’re going to read their complaints out loud, and I’m going to respond to each of them?” he said in an attempt to demonstrate that he was more prepared for what was coming than she expected.

“Traditionally,” she said, her words forcibly in place and not shaking all over. “That’s how it goes.”

And yet she was framing the statement like it was a choice. “That’s fine with me,” he said, just to make things clear. “We don’t need to make any special arrangements for my sake.”

She blinked, as if his words were covered in bedsheets with badly cut out eyes. “You sure you don’t want to tell the complainants to email me their complaints or give them my office hours?”

Why was the mayor…Liv…so concerned? The scene in the auditorium? Something underpinning the whole thing, like McManus?

Make good decisions,Leo had said.

But Artur had no idea what good decisions were, except to be careful. And do his job.

As far as the potential scene waiting for him in the auditorium went? He’d faced worse. Heck; he’dseenworse. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, doing his best to convince her. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

She looked at him and he’d swear he sawsomethingin her eyes. Fear? Worry? Concern? He sure as heck didn’t want to ask what was wrong, lest she consider it a personal affront or insult of some kind.

But he still couldn’t stop thinking about it. Did she believe him? Was she worried about him?

“Are you sure?” she asked, clearly driven by either any of the protective emotions or business or politics or something. “I can go right in there and stop this right now.”

There,the direction she pointed, was presumably the auditorium, and they would get nowhere if he didn’t chop through this field of weedy concern before it turned into something else. “Listen to me,” he said, crossing the distance between them but leaving space for her to push him away.

But she didn’t; she stood still, looking up at him. “Listening.”

He needed to tread carefully. “You can’t fix things when you don’t know what’s broken. And if this is the only way where as many people who are here will really talk to us, to me, about what’s bothering them? So be it.”

“But…”

“If we do anything else,” he continued, aware that he was on extremely shaky ground, “if we act as if we expect something to be wrong, then they’ll think not only is somethingactuallywrong, but also that we don’t want to fix this. We’re not on opposite sides, but if we come with sabers pointed in their direction, they’ll think that we are.”

Her nod popped a balloon of tension. “So,” she said, folding her arms, as if she’d turned back into the savvy politician she’d been when he came into her office on Monday, “what’s your plan then?”

That was easy.

“Act as if this is normal. Let them talk. Don’t stop them. Let them cover me in tomatoes,” he said, reminding her of what his position had been from the beginning. “Don’t act as if complaining or poking holes in Flaire’s awful plan isn’t wanted.”

He could see the moment where she heard Flaire’s name and wondered what was going on. “But…I don’t understand? Why does she have anything to do with this?”

“What they’re upset about, at least, as far as I can tell, is Flaire’s plan. That horrible plan is the reason why I got brought in here in the first place.”

She nodded. “Okay. I get it. You can’t create a foundation without knowing what’s wrong.”

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