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journalists loved to slant their stories. The piece said Frank was against public spending, that he was a free-market ideologue, and that he was a Wall Street junkie who had made billions in deals that inevitably ran aground. The paper even said he was against the environment. How could that be? That would destroy him , she thought. No one should be against freshwater rivers, pristine landscapes, natural beauty, and keeping polluting corporations in check . They compared him to the fictional Gordon Gekko of the 1980s movie Wall Street .
    He will lose , she thought. Just as well. She didn’t want to meet him or even run into him.
    “He will be the most despicable person I will have ever met,” Olivia said audibly to herself. “If I ever meet him.”

 

8
Francesca Oliviera
    Gary Allen was forty-nine with smiling eyes and a slim, angular body that made him look taller than the five foot eleven he was. A friend of his had introduced him to Olivia when he was studying architecture in New York. In her young days, she was vivacious but at peace with herself.
    For Gary, work was work, play was play, and family was family. He was fond of children, and his desire to play dad matched her eagerness to start a family. Despite their outward differences, they were good together. Olivia’s rise in political office to the position of senator had meant less time together, but fortunately she was making more money just as he was making less. Unfortunately for Gary, Olivia’s mind didn’t make the work/play/family connections he did so effortlessly. She carried her work home, and she carried her ache to spend more time with her children to her work. It tore her up, but she never acknowledged it; with her, it was always meant to be, a destiny that was somehow inevitable if you “had gifts” and if you “wanted to do something useful for society.” He still smiled whenever he thought of the Olivia he married.
    Lately, there hadn’t been much in his life to smile about. New construction was virtually at a standstill. Olivia was always very busy, and now she was in Iowa, campaigning. He had started doing a tutorial at the local architectural college. It kept him busy as the college was an hour-long drive away.
    Right now, though, Gary was smiling at Francesca, an attractive twenty-six-year-old immigrant from Belgium who was studying to be an interior designer.
    He had met her a few times. It was he who counseled her to go to design school. He had first run into her at the elementary school when she was dropping her nephews off.
    She had come up to him after the tutorials and asked questions. At times, he thought she was coming on to him. Gary’s friend, a former classmate and a medical doctor in whom he confided, said it was just his male ego. Gary loved Olivia and their two little girls. He had cheated on Olivia, but it was only once, six years ago. It had lasted a few months. She had never found out. Back when he was busy, he was hardly home.
    Now Gary taught stage and theatre design, a subject he thought was totally redundant in a recession—no new theatres were being built anywhere in the United States. Nevertheless, he enjoyed teaching. Besides, he had nothing else to keep him occupied during school hours.
    Francesca Oliviera had originally wanted to be an actress. She had studied drama for several years, working part-time as a waitress before she enrolled in the interior design course.
    “Should a concert hall be organic or de-con?” she asked him.
    “Organic,” he said. “I don’t like deconstructionist architecture.”
    “What is your favorite organic structure?”
    “The Fallingwater residence,” he said, referring to one of organic architecture’s most famous residential masterpieces in America.
    “Me too…I like Frank Lloyd Wright’s work a lot.”
    Gary could tell she liked him. He was good-looking and made time for his students, unlike some of the other tutors they had from the private sector.
    “Hello,”