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alone,
    she wondered yet again. But she also didn’t want to be rude to a man who was actually giving
    her a ride. “I’m twenty-eight,” she said. Satisfied ? Happy ? she wanted to add.
    Jason grinned. “Twenty-eight? Why you’re nothing but a child,” he said, knowing that it
    would annoy Liz. And Liz, true to form, rolled her eyes.
    “What is it that you do at this Meyers Center?” Jason asked and both Liz and Stephen
    looked at him, with neither understanding his interest. “Just curious,” he felt a need to add.
    Liz shrugged. What was the use, she thought. “I’m the youth director,” she said. “A youth
    director who’s very late and who really needs to be getting there.” She knew that she would
    have been even later if she had been forced to ride the city bus, but since she wasn’t riding the
    bus, thanks to him and his water splash, she didn’t see why she couldn’t at least get something
    out of the deal.
    Jason immediately pressed a button beside his seat. “Boris,” he said into the intercom.
    “Yes, sir?” the driver of the limousine responded.
    “Change in plans. Take us to the Meyers Center on Phoenix Avenue first.”
    Stephen nearly jumped from his seat. “The Meyers Center!” he blurted out, astonished.
    “But, sir, we’re almost at the Chamber! Boris can drop us off first and then he can take this,
    this person---”
    “Are you familiar with Phoenix Avenue, Boris?” Jason asked his driver, ignoring Stephen.
    “Somewhat familiar, yes, sir, I believe I am.”
    “What about the Meyers Center?”
    “The Meyers Center? Ah, I do believe so, yes, sir.”
    “Very good then,” Jason said and leaned back from the intercom. Stephen, knowing his
    boss too well, pulled out his Blackberry with much frustration and began to communicate with
    one of their advance people about this unfortunate turn of events. He even noted in his text
    message that if he didn’t know better, he’d say that their boss was behaving like some “love-
    sick juvenile.” But then he scratched that, because he did know Jason Rascone all too well,
    and the idea that he could possibly be attracted to some street woman, and a black street
    woman at that, was pushing it. He simply informed them to play for time, that they would be
    there as soon as they could.
    “Now that that’s taken care of,” Jason said to Liz as Stephen continued to peck furiously
    into his Blackberry, “let’s talk about you. How long have you been the Center’s director?”
    “The Center’s youth director,” Liz corrected as she folded her soaked handkerchief and
    tried her best not to think about her pitiful circumstances. “I’ve been working there almost a
    month.”
    “No, one month? That’s all? Where did you work before that?”
    “No-where,” she said and both Stephen and Jason looked at her. “I mean I worked, but not
    here. I was in Philly. Philadelphia. I’ve only been in town a month.”
    “So you’re a transplant?”
    “In a way I guess you could say that. I was born here, but I left when I went away to
    college, and I never came back.”
    Jason’s look changed, as he stared unblinkingly at her. He remembered that part of it well.
    She left him that morning and he felt oddly unhinged. Sex with her had been so good to him,
    the best he’d ever had on so many levels, that he couldn’t get it out of his system. He slept
    with other women, but none of them gave him that level of emotional connection he felt when
    he had that night with Liz.
    He had it so bad that he even went to the campus of Harvard University looking for her.
    But from what he could obtain from the dorm, from the Registrar’s office, from a few people
    that knew a few people, Liz never checked in. Terrified, Jason phoned her father. When
    Hamp told him that he already knew, that Liz had met some civil rights fanatic and had taken
    off with him, Jason was livid. He wanted to know where, and all the background on this guy
    she fled with. But