City Hall in Key West is a converted high school from the ‘40s. It’s been remodeled and extended several times, but it still has “the look” of a school from back in the day, complete with crisp white paint and a bigger-than-life tiger sculpture anchoring the corner of White and United streets.
An iguana leaped up onto a palm’s trunk and ascended as soon as the carts bumped up onto the sidewalk. It was the welcome I had learned to expect when we arrived anywhere, although usually it wasn’t lizards who were doing the leaping.
Kona started marshaling forces over the comm link “Remember to bring the drama,” she said. The irony was not lost on me as I fought off a decorative planting to get out of my seat. Maneuvers commenced with my camera and tripod.
Gus was pattering with Callie in my ear about bandwidth, frame rates, and other stuff I didn’t care about as my eyes took in the scene.
In the street, a boy was throwing a disk for a dog. Three seniors with walkers had taken a rest break midway up the ramp. A handful of tourists with phones out were posing by the tiger for group photos and selfies, and a city bus idled in the pull off on United.
“I’m going inside to find Myrtle,” Sharon announced. Tonya trailed her up the steps to capture the action.
A bored cop appeared to be debating about engaging in a discussion with one of the kittens. Louisa removed the option as she closed in on him, me trailing with my gear.
“Hernando reported three news choppers from Miami are on the way to cover the riot,” Callie said, appearing abruptly in my earpiece.
“There isn’t any riot!” Several heads turned my way and Louisa, mouth open to start chatting up the cop, looked at me over the camera.
“Sometimes she hears things,” Louisa said, turning back to the cop, who, it turned out, was named Mike Speck, and seemed to have history with Louisa. “So, you’re here for crowd control?”
“Nah. I’m adding a deck and needed to get a permit,” he said. “You can’t park on the sidewalk. You’ll get a ticket if you leave it there.”
“We heard there was a protest over here and wanted to do some interviews.”
“Really?” Mike looked around like he’d missed the memo.
Louisa gyrated jiggles for eye action, and Mike confirmed that her memo had been received.
“We could do an interview over dinner,” he offered.
Behind me I heard Kona pouring sex kitten foam on the ground as she interviewed the tiger tourists.
Somehow, the whole thing she had engineered seemed a little misleading.
“Hot damn! Now we’re gonna get some overthrow action! Karl said you girls couldn’t stay away.” Myrtle was making an appearance in Sharon’s interview. Tonya owned a tight shot of just the reporter and eye witness.
“What can you tell us about this situation,” Sharon asked, wafting lava-hot-reporter pheromones around the lobby. She pushed a hand mic toward Myrtle.
Louisa and Mike were chatting up the receptionist, which didn’t look too much like a riot in progress, so I was catching some B roll of a checkers game and wondering how to build a box that could contain our Kona problem.
“KBF4 wants to stream clips of you guys live until the reporters get on site,” Callie said, once again showing up from somewhere in the vapor that seemed to be our online presence. “I told them we own access to the data and repro rights, if you authorize it. That was for Millie.”
Louisa was a lost cause, so I closed in on Sharon for consultation. “You heard Callie?”
“I did. I’d say go for it.”
“You’re very pretty, aren’t you?” A senior citizen with walker had joined Myrtle. She tittered before hacking. “I mean this one.” He pointed at Sharon, who automatically, briefly, flashed her performance smile.
“She’s outta your league, ya old goat!” Myrtle can be abrasive when shifting gears. She whapped Sharon’s admirer with Karl for emphasis, generating significant totterage on the accused goat’s part.
Sharon jiggles owned the room as she backpedaled out of Myrtle’s range, with about twenty octogenarian eyes tracking her. Walkers clattered in excitement.
“Earth to C-Bones. Get something signed,” I told Callie. “And some way for us to figure out what happened later. I’m not sure what’s going to develop down here, but we’re in the middle of it.”
“WE… HAVE ARRIVED!” Kona practically shouted as she flung open the front door, making a grand entrance, prancing, with Gus and two cops trailing. Gus elbowed his way through the auto-closer action, finally resorted to blocking the door open with half a power bar and some hydraulic knowledge magic.
Kona turned and showgirled for the cops and camera. “The riot in Key West’s city hall is developing. Some witnesses report the mayor has begun drafting an executive order banning assemblies not on boats.”
"THERE ISN’T ANY RIOT!” I yelled. I may have stamped a foot. Several protesters cupped their hands behind ears, trying to catch the whole story. One of the cops looked over my way, before being recaptured by shimmies from the kitten.
“Inside voice, Millie,” Tonya said, tapping her ear.
Kona leaned into the camera. Sultry. Steaming. “Y’all come on down and tell Mayor Max what you think! Free hugs and selfies for the first three hundred!”
The dog, carrying his disk, notified me of his presence with a surprise contact in my less public regions.
Tonya looked annoyed and tapped her ear again with drill sergeant emphasis.
“Supposed to rain again tonight,” Gus offered. The evening temperature on the porch was perfect, but the atmosphere of secrets, post riot, was frosty.
I sipped coffee, with chocolate sauce, wondering if enough caffeine would keep me up all night. There were advantages to being awake when everyone else was sleeping. I considered the list in my head.
“Well, I think it turned out fine,” the kitten said. “We got the views we needed, thanks to all the news distributions. And Myrtle.” She kneaded Gus while looking satisfied, having unrolled an entire ball of yarn during the course of the day.
I replied with a look, a sip, and silence. It bothers me when Kona plays dumb. It also bothers me when she turns her brain on to solve problems.
Louisa fluffed her hair and adjusted in the swing. “Myrtle got propositioned by three different guys and the woman who hangs out at the Frosty Barn. She’s out with prospect number one this evening.”
“Maybe Karl will get replaced.” Our Sharon was lounging in the hammock, rocking gently with one foot on the floor. “Dad said he saw me on the news.” She typed with her thumbs and made her “I’m thinking” face.
“The good thing is, we still have us, and our home,” Gus said, trying to channel multiple important-emotion-threads into harmony with dumb waffle logic.
“Twenty three months left on the contract,” Sharon commented, still a million miles away in her phone.
“What was the final number?” I asked. My nerves were raw from the stressball roller coaster we’d been on.
“936,229 views, 271,937 watch hours, as of the last data dump,” Callie reported. Her laptop lit her face as she streamed data into her brain and Hernando’s memory. “Plus dates for Myrtle and Weesa. Two parking tickets. And a city commission summons for next Wednesday. Momositas brand is trending on six platforms in three countries.”
Tonya’s phone dinged. After reading the text, she handed it to Kona, who stopped kneading and started purring. “KBF4 wants me to do a guest weather girl appearance!”
“They need you to make a hurricane out of a meteor shower?” I meant it to sting.
She lit the porch with her smile and returned to petting Gus.
