quad, she started narrowing her choices. She could go kinky (“Is it true you enjoy paddling?”) or she could go criminal (“Is it true you enjoy gambling?”). Both were sensationalistic. Both would amount to a denial, but by then she’d have her foot in the door.
Bob Kellerman denies allegations of gambling.
It was tabloid journalism, to be sure, but the balance in news between ethics and entertainment had been tipped long ago to favor the latter. That was what had been so attractive about her task force story. She maneuvered through the crowd of undergrads. The storm clouds had dissipated and a sunny drunken glow poured out over the field. And there was Deedee near the dais on the stairs. The candidate and his handlers were probably still inside, prepping their talking points. Lilly shoved toward her old pal.
“Hey, D, how about a kiss?” Lilly’s bravado was just that—one didn’t recover from an anxiety attack in twenty minutes. But bravado was expected, so bravado was provided.
“What have you got now, L, thirty-one piercings?”
“One for every flavor, babe.”
“You can go backstage,” said Deedee, “ after the speech. You’ll have maybe thirty seconds.”
“That’s all I need.”
“I know. I’ve heard.”
Lilly rolled her eyes and scanned the crowd for a good place to stand. The audience was diverse, but she expected nothing less from a Berkeley crowd. Still, her fellow Goths had to be somewhere, usually in the shade…and there they were. Lilly joined them under a poplar tree.
The president of the college, Nancy Holland, approached the podium. It was time.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began, and Lilly tuned out the rest. She wasn’t here to listen to Nancy Holland. She wasn’t even here to listen to Bob Kellerman. She was here to snare a quote.
A pasty-faced teenager to her right offered her a clove cigarette. She gladly accepted. She felt like a kid again.
Finally, Bob Kellerman took the stage. The audience sang out in symphonic applause. Lilly couldn’t help but be swept up in the adoration. She couldn’t see what was so special about the man but the crowd ate him up.
He was a good-looking man, not movie-star handsome but the physiognomy of a Norman Rockwell character, one who loved to watch his first-born son hit a home run in Little League. Another apple-pie American. His hair and eyes were the same shade of chestnut brown, and the maple-colored tie he wore underlined their earthiness. He had a curious scar across the middle of his left eyebrow, almost indistinguishable and yet impossible to ignore. Did it stem from a childhood accident? One of the few facts Lilly recalled about the man was that he was a volunteer fireman. Perhaps the scar came from that. Perhaps there wasn’t a scar at all, and some genius in makeup had penciled it in to make Kellerman appear more rugged.
He spoke for forty-five minutes. Much of the time he seemed to be extemporizing off the top of his head, but Lilly was certain it was an oratory trick. The thesis of his speech was conservation, always a safe topic in enviro-conscious Northern California. He referenced Berkeley’s activist past and encouraged everyone to vote for change and…Lilly tuned him out. Politics wasn’t her thing. She used the time he spoke to come up with her Outrageous Question. By the time he wrapped up, she’d chosen.
According to Deedee, the candidate was going to retreat into Sproul Hall where he would reconnoiter with his entourage, and then they would exit out the Telegraph Avenue door to a rope line. According to Deedee, the best time for her thirty seconds would be in Sproul Hall, and she had to climb over (and under) co-eds to get there. Fortunately, Lilly’s small size and big attitude made crowd-climbing none too difficult, and she met up with Deedee at the top of the stairs.
“Thirty seconds,” Deedee reminded her.
Lilly nodded and entered the building and there he was, the man of the hour, surrounded by a cadre of Important People whom Lilly neither knew nor cared about.
“Governor Kellerman!” she called out, inflecting her voice with even more hoarseness than usual—all the better to grab his attention. And grab his attention it did. He glanced over at her, curiosity in his eyes, and then his human pit-bull bodyguard stomped between them.
“No press,” the bodyguard growled.
“Just one question?” She angled her tiny head to the side and again caught Kellerman’s gaze. She flashed him an innocent grin. “Please?”
“Sure,” the governor replied. He probably thought she was an undergrad. She