Due Justice

Chapter 6

We looked around for the senator’s wife. There were small conversation pods here and there, but I noticed a particularly large group under the stairs near the entrance to the dining room gathered like flies at a picnic.

“Why don’t we try over there,” I pointed my head.  “Likely our guests of honor, right?”

We moved toward the swarm. Forward progress was glacial. Elbows and pointed toes blocked our passage. Sometimes painfully.

Eventually, we were close enough to see Senator Warwick, his wife standing next to him.

“Kate, look at that dress. She looks fabulous.” I whispered close to Kate’s ear, but needn’t have worried about being overheard. The din was as loud as a rock concert.

Victoria, a woman of some years as they say, displayed herself in a full-length emerald lamé gown bearing a “V” neckline that plunged almost to her waist, exhibiting way more than a bit of cleavage.

“I heard she’d had surgery. I thought they said facelift. Apparently, it’s something lower she had lifted.”  Kate whispered back with extraordinary cattiness.

“Christian Grover said breast implants stuffed this room,” I replied, grinning.

“Christian’s a pig, but he’s usually right,” Kate responded. “Have you ever noticed how humans are creatures of selective attention?”

When Kate gets into her Zen, or whatever it is, she’s a little too Eastern for me to take her seriously. “What?”

“Attention focused on any thing creates that thing, Wilhelmina.”

“So, I’ve created these implants through my imagination? They’re not really here? We’re not being invaded by an alien species of amazons?” I teased her.

“Don’t mock me. You know what I mean. You’re so often in your own world that you don’t see what’s plainly visible.”  Sometimes she still acts like my mother. I like it.

The crowd stepped back a little and we could now observe its nucleus.

Senator Warwick, speaking loudly enough to be overheard, holding forth on what he proposed to do if the good voters returned him to the Senate in the fall elections. He was talking to O’Connell Worthington and other members of the party who had gathered around him closest. The liberals were adoring fans--conservatives resembled sharks to chub.

“Something has got to be done about the product liability crisis in this country. A number of our best corporate citizens have been put out of business by these frivolous product liability suits. When I return to the Senate, I’ll make sure America can compete in the global economy without fear of bankrupting its businesses.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Kate said.

Preaching to the choir, though this wasn’t a political rally.

His wife looked glassy-eyed. She might have been drinking before she arrived; George’s staff would not have served her.

Kate noticed Victoria’s condition, too.

“Duty calls,” she said, squeezed my arm briefly, approached Victoria and led her away.

I turned to thread my way out when Christian Grover’s voice rose to challenge.

“Come on, Senator. That’s a lie.”

The collective gasped.

Warwick replied, “So you claim, Grover. You’re not exactly objective.”

Grover pressed on. “Maybe. But you are wrong. Statistics repeatedly show very few successful product liability awards to victims in this country. Corporations make billions of dollars selling defective products knowingly, intending to injure consumers. Big business owns you, Warwick. Don’t dress this up like an altruistic crusade.”