Chapter 12: Victory

I WAS PISSED OFF when I got home, as well as pissed on. I stripped my clothes and took a long hot shower, more to relax than to get clean. Then I put my clothes in the washing machine.

I decided a long time ago that humiliation was a personal choice. God knows, Debbie tried hard enough to humiliate me. Even while we were still together, she seldom had a good word to say about me. Then, when I refused to rise to her bait, she said I was unfeeling and destined to be alone.

I’m not unfeeling. My response to my jail time was certainly not unfeeling. I was in a rage and swore to bring down the police who trapped and confined me, and everyone who backed and supported them. I didn’t think cops at that low a level acted on their own. Someone had passed down an order.

I intended to destroy whoever it was. These weren’t ICE officers who could act with anonymous impunity above the law.

After I was clean, I dressed in soft pajamas and went to the reading cove with one of the finalist manuscripts. I used to wear sweats when I went to the reading cove, but the girls had given me several pairs of soft pajamas because they liked them and sometimes stole the shirt to wear themselves. Since they liked them, I wore them, though I still stripped them off to sleep naked when I went to bed.

I intentionally chose a nonfiction expose of the effect server farms had on the Southern California environment to read. It was dry reading, though technically flawless, with impeccable research. It was entered in the general nonfiction category and I thought it would have been better in the regional category. Regardless, I found myself drowsing as I read.

I woke to soft bodies cuddled against me on either side. I indulged myself in the feeling of my angels next to me without stirring. They were aware.

“You’re awake!” Pearl whispered. “My poor sweetheart. Dad told us all about what happened at the police station.”

“It’s okay now. Just having the two of you near me resolves a world of hurt,” I said, giving them a squeeze.

“Not to mention being put to sleep by this boring manuscript,” Ruby said, pointing to the loose pages fallen in front of me. “Honestly, I don’t know how this one got through the open reading round. It is so dry!”

“It’s more than that,” Pearl defended. “It shows a reader interest in both AI and the environment. In terms of publishing, we need to be as aware of reader interest as of text quality. It’s not always the best words that capture the reader.”

“True,” I said. “I think it would have done better in the local category than general nonfiction.”

“That’s probably where we’ll position it when we publish,” Pearl said.

I loved talking books with the twins, but just having them cuddled against me was enough to alter my mood.

Unfeeling?

I was flooded with the warmth and love I felt for these two.

It was late when we finally separated to go to bed.

As far as pressing charges went, the wheels of justice grind slowly. I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

On the other hand, our city battle moved forward rapidly. At the meeting of the Waterfront Business Association, a motion to split the association between the Waterfront and Downtown passed with an overwhelming vote. The Downtown Businesses never paid that much attention to the Waterfront Association, mostly considering it a burden they carried. Immediately after the vote, a second proposal to present the petition to the Planning Commission passed as well. We gained another half-dozen signatures on the petition.