Free Finally by Lynn Galli

re. As a mother of three grown children, Tammy was resourceful in getting people to do what she needed. She was one of the best political wranglers in the business.
    Noticing that she’d closed the door on the way in, I waited her out. She usually left it open for a quick escape after dropping whatever bomb she held in her hand.
    “She was talking about racially motivated fi rings at the labor rally today,” she started, obviously hoping I’d fi ll in the rest.
    “It was a labor rally. I’d say that was a good move.” My eyes squeezed to slits trying to fi gure out what could have happened.
    “She might have singled out one of our corporate backers by name.”
    I coughed or laughed or cough-laughed, unable to hold in my surprise. This mayor had said some stupid things in the past, but 60

    Objection
    this was a doosey. “Might have? Is there a chance this speech took place only in your imagination?” Her glum eyes fl icked away for a moment, dashing my hopes that this was some kind of joke. “Do you two just sit around on the weekend and dream up ways to make my job more challenging?”
    “You can fi x it, right?” She pressed up onto her tiptoes, anxious for my agreement.
    “Fix the mayor insulting an important corporate backer by rallying against their questionable labor practices?” I didn’t know why I was taking it out on the messenger, but sometimes I was convinced Tammy needed to focus her wrangling skills from getting in and out of the right spots to keeping a handle on the mayor’s error prone ways. “Yes, I can fi x it. Do not let her take another podium until I’ve fi gured out how, though.”
    “You’re awesome, Linds. She’ll be thrilled to hear it.”
    Not relieved, thrilled. Typical. What else did I expect when I worked for a politician who had diarrhea of the mouth? If only I’d dropped out of that fi rst Poli Sci course in college. I could be boring myself to death in a cubicle running numbers instead of trying to fi gure out how to get my boss out of a coffi n deep hole without a rope.
    “Your friend is an idiot,” Yoshi Nakamura, the city’s best public defender and one of my good friends, declared as he sauntered into my offi ce moments after Tammy’s escape and dropped into a chair. The familiar move had started three years ago when he’d left a posh law fi rm for the public defender’s small cubicle with a twenty-fi ve year old scratched desk and questionable chair that would fail whenever he tilted back more than ten degrees. He’d often bring his case load over and work at the extra table I had in my offi ce. Since our work habits were similar, I never minded.
    “So is my boss,” I said under my breath, but the wide grin on his round face told me he’d heard.
    61

    Lynn Galli
    “Don’t tell me…”
    “Yep, another mouth drool today.”
    “She must really hate you.”
    “Probably more than I know,” I joked back. “What’s this about my friend?”
    “Oh, that Valerie—thanks for requesting I get assigned to that fi asco by the way—has been handed a gift from the ADA and won’t take it.” The gel in his normally polished black hair failed him with his repeated head shaking. The side part that could be used as a straight edge kept fl opping back and forth as he blew out his frustration. “And she keeps asking me to talk s-l-o-w, she d-o-e-s-n-t un-der-s-t-a-n-d me.”
    “Oh my god,” I blew out, matching his frustration. It was one thing to be stupid, quite another to be racist and a xenophobe.
    Yoshi had moved onto my dorm fl oor during our second semester at college. At the time, he didn’t know much English. Now, his native Japanese accent was barely detectable anymore. “What can I say? She’s defi nitely an idiot. Was she arraigned today?”
    “Just fi nished up. The ADA cornered me on the way out, offering one year suspended with completion of an anger management course. Can you guess how she reacted?”
    “With anger?” I didn’t even need to