“I think you should. Tess’s dad bikes. He owns a company. I bet you’d meet important people who would vote for you.”
“Like, motorcycles?”
“A motorcycle?!” Lindz asked, her attention finally riveted on me and not her phone. “How cool would that be?! ”
“I take it you meant bicycles, then.”
“Yeah, but go back to this motorcycle thing. Can I ride it? I won’t tell Mom.”
“I would like your mother to use her extensive medical knowledge to save and heal people. Not to dismember me in the most painful way possible.”
“So that’s a no?”
“A definite no,” I assured her. “What did you learn about in history class today?” Mr. Jones was one of the few teachers I liked at Lindz’s school.
“The Constitutional Convention,” said Lindz, back to typing on her phone. “Boring.”
I sighed.
***
“Honey,” I asked on Saturday after breakfast. “Do you think I should take up biking?”
Amy looked over at me. “You mean on a motorcycle?”
“Why does everyone think that? Do I just ooze so much swagger that everyone thinks I need a hog?”
She snorted. “Yes, dear. That’s precisely it.”
I heard Lindz’s phone ring upstairs. It was hard to miss a Justin Bieber song at full blast.
“Hey, Sal,” said Lindz, her voice echoing through the hall and down the stairs.
“I meant road biking,” I clarified to Amy. “And it was Lindz’s idea.”
Amy raised her eyebrows. “That’s interesting.”
“Yeah. She said I could meet important people who might vote for me.”
“Let me ask, hang on,” said Lindz. “Moooom!” she called. “Can I go to the mall with Sal and her mom?”
Amy took a deep breath and got up to go have a conversation with Lindz in a normal decibel range. I opened my laptop.
Lindz had set my campaign website as my homepage, and I grimaced at my stupid photo. Moved by a strange and distasteful compulsion, I scrolled down to the “Endorsements:” section of the page.
Still only one endorsement.
Bob’s Heating and Cooling.
“Jon’s a real nice guy.”
I wondered if endorsements from cousins even counted.
I opened another window and typed in “bike stores.”
Just then, I heard Lindz start giggling hysterically. After a minute or two, Amy’s melodious laugh joined in. Probably a girl thing.
I checked my calendar. Two and a half weeks until my endorsement interview with the local paper. I penciled in some time for interview prep.
And only three more weeks after that until the school board debates. They’d be televised. Only on a public access station, of course, but still.
I frowned. What do school board candidates wear to debates?
I typed it into Google. The search results weren’t particularly helpful.
Upstairs, the girls were still laughing. I’ve spent enough time analyzing data to recognize a pattern when I see it. Or hear it, in this case. I watched the clock.
Little laugh at twenty seconds. Little laugh at forty-five seconds. Big laugh at a minute and twenty seconds. And then repeat.
YouTube video, said my impressive deductive faculties.
“Jon?” said Amy after the next big laugh. “I think you should come up here and see this.”
“Is it the cat on the skateboard?” I asked as I walked up the stairs. “Nick sent that one to me last week.”
“Nope,” said Lindz, who was sitting on her bed with a huge grin on her face. “Even better.”
I squinted at the computer. The video started with a still of my campaign website.
“Ready?” Lindz asked.
She didn’t wait for a reply before pushing the button, which was probably smart. I had a sinking feeling about the whole thing.
“I’m Jon Cass,” said a pompous voice as the mouth on my photo opened and closed with some bad Photoshop work. “And I’m running for Palo Alto School Board. I have a PhD in something that’s so boring I can’t even say it online. It’s from Harvard, though, I can say that part. I’m running for school board because I know I’m smarter than everyone else. See, it says so right here.” A little arrow popped up, pointing to the part on the page where it said “Harvard,” and then about seven more popped up in other places on the page where Harvard was mentioned.
Lindz giggled, and Amy bit her lip.
“I have all sorts of big ideas about changing the education system. And I know I’m right, because I teach at Stanford.”
A little arrow popped up, pointing at the word “Stanford.”
“I mean, why should middle schoolers be learning about American history, when they could be learning about Latin American politics? Why should they be learning simple algebra when they could be learning complicated statistics? In fact, why don’t secondary schools around here just look a lot more like Harvard?”
Lots of arrows again.
“Or like Stanford?”
Even more arrows.
Lindz laughed, and Amy coughed in a suspiciously laugh-like manner.
“The other people running against me are all experienced teachers and administrators in this district, but hey—what do they know? All of them went to state schools. They clearly have no idea what they’re talking about. And our curriculum? Which has been in place for ten years? That’s obviously a big old waste of time too. In fact, all of you voters probably learned the same stuff in school. That’s why I’m so much smarter than you.”
A poorly-drawn pair of pants appeared over my actual pants in the photo. They said “Smarty” down one leg.
“So, simple voters, let me help you here. Vote for me on Election Day. After all, I’m a family man!”
And then two more poorly drawn figures popped up on either side of me. One was a busty brunette wearing a Crimson dress who looked vaguely like Amy if she’d had about four tequilas and some extensive plastic surgery. The other was a cross-eyed little girl with the word “Genius” on her Cardinal-red shirt.
Lindz and Amy both laughed loudly.
“Seriously?” I said, looking at them. “That’s funny?”
They just kept laughing.
I walked downstairs and sat on the couch. I fiddled with the TV remote but didn’t actually press any buttons.
I heard Lindz and Amy walk quietly downstairs, but I ignored them.
The views counter on the video had said 10,377. I wondered if Nick could get me back on the teaching schedule for Winter quarter.
“Dad?” said Lindz softly.
I grunted.
“Sorry for laughing.”
I grunted again.
She was quiet for a minute, and then she walked over and sat next to me on the couch.
“There’s this guy at school. Derek Shaw. Total nerd. Used to get picked on all the time. Derek tried to pretend he was cool for a while, but it really didn’t work. One day he showed up in a leather jacket. You could even tell the teachers were trying not to roll their eyes.”
“Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?” I asked.
She put up a wait-for-it finger. “But then, the next day, Derek showed up in a Star Trek uniform. And you’d think that everyone would tease him even more, but that wasn’t true. Everyone thought it was cool—in a dorky way, of course, but still cool. Two other kids started eating lunch with him and geeking out about Star Trek, and Mr. Jones still calls him ‘Ensign Derek.’ Now he’s like our class mascot. Everyone asks Derek for help with homework, everyone wants Derek sitting at our lunch tables to tell us funny stories. I mean, he’s not cool in the traditional sense, but what does that matter if he has all the same benefits as the cool kids, and still gets to wear his Star Trek uniform to school on Fridays?”
I looked at Lindz for a long moment.
Then the doorbell rang and Lindz ran over, threw the door open, shouted, “Later!�
�� over her shoulder, and ran out the door, snapping Sally’s bra strap as she went.
“Hey!” yelled Sal, slamming the door. I could hear her footsteps running after Lindz’s.
“Honey?” I called, still staring at the door.
“Yeah?” asked Amy from the edge of the living room.
“Is Lindz some sort of political prodigy?”
Amy smiled. “Just a middle school girl, I think. But maybe that amounts to the same thing.”
“They say there’s no such thing as negative publicity,” I said slowly.
“Now ten thousand people know your name, where you got your doctorate, and where you teach. And it’s not like you went to Berkeley or something.”
I nodded slowly, and then stood up and kissed Amy. “Be back in an hour or so.”
“Where are you headed?” she asked.
“The bike store.”
***
One hour and three thousand dollars later, I had a shiny new Cardinal-red road bike.
“Do you need any more bike clothes with that?” asked the nice young salesman. “A couple more pairs of shorts or a jersey or anything?”
“Just this pair, the shoes, and the helmet for now,” I assured him. “Can I leave my car out front and come back and get it later?”
“Sure,” the kid said. “Gonna go try it out?”
“Yeah, I thought I’d ride over to Town and Country.”
He nodded. “Don’t bike down El Camino, though. Take side streets. Busy roads aren’t really the best place to try out clipless pedals for the first time.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding and trying to look like I understood. “Thanks.”
About three hundred feet past the bike shop, I did understand.
“Stupid clipless pedals,” I muttered as I picked myself up from my third fall.
Eventually, I made it over to Town and Country, bought myself a few Stanford jerseys, and then went to the tailor to drop off the intimidatingly stretchy bike shorts.
“I can embroider something on them,” the nice woman said with a frown. “But I doubt it would be very comfortable to wear.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I assured her. “No pain, no gain, right?”
She gave me a skeptical smile, pulled out a piece of paper, sketched the bike shorts, and wrote “Smarty” down the right thigh.
“Like this?”
I nodded.
She bit her lip. “Monday okay?”
***
Almost two weeks later, I was in the kitchen when Amy came home from work. I heard her pause and sniff the air, like a tigress.
I grinned in her direction. Like a tiger.
“Hon, are you making Garlic Shrimp Linguine?” she called from the living room.
“Yeah,” I called back, trying to sound nonchalant. “It just sounded good for some reason.” I waited a beat. “By the way, Lindz ended up going for a last-minute slumber party at Sal’s house. I figured that’d be okay with you.”
Amy sauntered into the kitchen and leaned back against the doorframe. “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice had a gentle purr to it. “What are we going to do all evening without her? On a Friday night. After Garlic Shrimp Linguine.”
“Oh,” I said, still trying to sound nonchalant. “I thought we could have a quiet dinner with some wine, and you could tell me all about your day.”
Her eyes lit up in a sudden smile. “That’s sweet, Jon. I had a couple of interesting cases today—but why don’t we talk about your day first?”
That’s Reason 35,471 that I love Amy. Not only is she willing to let me yammer about my campaign progress before telling me how she saved people’s lives with her bare hands, she’s willing to frame it as her own idea. During a romantic dinner.
My heart sped up a little and I smiled back at her. “If you insist.”
“I do,” she said. “Do you mind if I eat in my scrubs?”
“Of course not,” I told her. “You look beautiful wearing anything.” Or nothing, part of my brain added. “Besides, they set off your eyes beautifully.”
They didn’t. Dark purple probably doesn’t really set off anyone’s eyes. But I occasionally know the right thing to say too.
The corner of her mouth turned up just slightly, and then she stretched up to get two wine glasses from the cabinet, a thin line of smooth skin showing between her top and her pants.
Easy, I told myself. After dinner.
After we’d sat down, I let Amy’s first forkful of linguine get about halfway to her mouth before I blurted out, “Guess who only has two opponents in the school board campaign?”
Instead of giving me a look and saying, “Uh, you?,” which would have been a valid response, she just flashed me a huge grin. “Did Esparza drop out?”
“Yep. Announced it today. So now it’s just me, Soo, and Imbali left.”
Technically, that wasn’t true. There were now four people running for two seats, but everyone knew Doug Burliman, the three-time incumbent, was a shoo-in for reelection. The real competition was for second place.
“Ha,” she said. “You’ll crush Miriam Soo in the debate, blindfolded, gagged, and with your hands tied behind your back.”
I snorted. “I think she’d actually do better gagged. She looks like a great candidate—until she opens her mouth and goes all hippie-dippie Montessori Mom. I mean, replacing letter grades with different colors of smiley faces? What kind of grading system is that?”
“And you can beat Jasmine Imbali any day. She’s like, what, nineteen?”
I grinned. “Twenty-nine,” I admitted. “And she’s been a teacher in the district for five years.”
“You’ve been a professor for more than twice that,” she pointed out.
“True. But she’s also a biracial woman, and I’m a white man.”
Amy shrugged. “So? Being an advocate of diversity doesn’t mean picking the wrong person for the job. Not when it’s for something as important as school board,” she added, arching her brow.
I wasn’t quite sure how she meant that last part, but I decided it was easiest to take her literally. “Thanks,” I said, twirling some pasta onto my fork. “Also, I was planning to bike in the Tour De Menlo tomorrow, if you don’t need me to run errands in the morning.”
She gave me a look. “Isn’t that fifty miles?”
“Forty-six,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll win or anything, but I think it’ll be good publicity even just to show up. But it starts at 7 am, so I’ll need to get up early tomorrow.”
Amy gave me a slow, smoldering smile. “As long as you don’t expect to be fully rested before the ride.”
Reason 35,472.
“So I got introduced to two new people today,” I said, trying to keep my thoughts somewhere in the realm of acceptable dinner conversation. “Matt Wyatt and Joe Davis.”
Amy frowned. “Don’t they work for that social media startup?”
“Bloppr? Honey, they don’t just work for it, they own it. They gave that kid who started it a ton of money for the company and booted him out, and now they’ve tripled the revenue.”
Amy raised one eyebrow. “I guess it’s a good thing that young people don’t vote in school board elections. They might not like your supporters.”
I shrugged. “People in their twenties are way too interested in changing the world to focus on local issues. They think the presidential campaign is way sexier.”
Amy shook her head, her eyes twinkling. “If only they knew.”
“So we biked all the way up Old La Honda and had beers at Alice’s. Wyatt and Davis told me all sorts of Silicon Valley gossip. It was great.”
“Are they going to vote for you?”
“I think so,” I said, sipping some wine.
“And how was the ride back down 84?”
Reason 35,473 that I love Amy is that she didn’t nag me, even though the curvy downhill ride was a little less fun—or, at least, a little more terrifying—after a beer.
“It was fine
,” I said. “Oh, and when we got back down, guess how many Teslas were in the Arastradero parking lot?”
“Three?”
“Ten. Of the twelve cars in the lot. These guys are so cool. I’m really glad Lindz brought up this whole biking thing.”
“Me too,” said Amy, but without bringing up the fact that she’d been trying to get me to start exercising regularly for years. 35,474.
We chatted through the rest of the meal, mostly about my upcoming campaign events. When we finished, I reached over for her plate.
“I’ll do the dishes.”
“You sure?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” I said, flashing her what I hoped was a seductive smile. “Want to fill up our glasses and meet me in the living room?”
Her smile may have actually raised the temperature in the room by a few degrees.
I washed the dishes as quickly as I could without actually breaking anything, and then made myself take a deep breath before leaving the kitchen.
I tried to walk with feline grace into the living room. I probably failed, but it didn’t really matter. Amy was already lounging on the couch, one arm beneath her head. She’d lit a few candles and dimmed the lights. In the candlelight, her scrubs really did bring out her eyes. Crazy.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked as I approached her.
“Yep,” she said with a grin. “My husband’s on his way from the kitchen to ravish me.”
I perched on the edge of the sofa and kissed her. She kissed me back and ran her fingers slowly from my knee up my thigh.
Then she froze.
So did I.
I hear that lots of people have doctor fantasies. My hypothesis is that none of them are married to actual doctors.
Amy’s touch, so intimate a moment before, turned cool and professional as she prodded my thigh.
I flinched.
Amy’s eyes flashed up to meet mine, and I nearly groaned out loud—and not in a sexy way.
She had caught me.
“Jon,” she said, her voice steady, “what’s this?”
Maybe there was still a chance. If I could just keep her occupied…
“Nothing,” I said, moving my leg away from her, trying to distract her with a light caress along her collarbone.
Saxifrage & Starshine Page 6
