Up in Smoke by Charlene Weir

away.
    â€œWhere you going?”
    â€œAnywhere, man.”
    â€œWe have to tell the cops,” Tony said.
    â€œYou do it. I’m gone.”
    â€œMax!” Tony ran after him and grabbed his arm. “We have to get help.”
    After that it started to get kinda confusing. There was a lot of commotion with people running over to see what happened and pretty soon the cops were there. And not too long after that they were at the cop house and Uncle Osey had his butt on the front edge of his desk and he wasn’t looking too friendly.
    â€œGive it to me,” Osey said in a cop voice.
    â€œPromise you won’t get mad.”
    â€œTony—”
    Osey had all the patience in the world, but Tony could see even he was getting a little tight. Tony told it all, except the part where he tried to stop Max taking the car. That made him sound like making up excuses.
    Osey looked madlike at him the whole time and that made Tony nervous and he kept forgetting stuff and having to go back and put it in and Max kept interrupting to add his two cents and the whole thing just sounded really snarky and by then even Max knew they were in a whole lot of trouble and kept saying actually it was a good thing they’d done it ’cause what would’ve happened if they hadn’t, she might have been totally rotted out before anybody knew and by the time Tony was finally finished with everything a whole lot of time had gone by and he wondered how an ordinary Sunday could turn into such a mess.

15
    The discreet tap on the door was a member of the Sunflower Hotel staff returning Sean’s clean laundry, neatly plastic-wrapped. In at 10 P.M. , out at 10 A.M. , and bless all hotels who provided such a needed service. Some places he’d stayed didn’t offer much more than beds and those had dirty sheets. He dumped the package on a chair, found the remote and zapped on the television. As he transferred socks and underwear to a drawer and hung up shirts, he watched a reporter stick a microphone in the face of Congresswoman Stendor as she came from one of the House office buildings.
    â€œTell us what you think of the growing number of presidential candidates?”
    â€œIt reaffirms my faith in the American people. That in these most difficult times, there are so many willing to put themselves in the fray and serve.”
    â€œAnyone who stands out as a sure winner?”
    â€œEveryone who runs for president has the soul of a winner.” She walked swiftly to the car and slid in.
    â€œWhat about Governor Garrett?” the reporter asked before she could close the door. “You were classmates at Harvard. Does that mean his soul is more likely to win than the others?”
    â€œIt means friends don’t have to be in the same political party.” She closed the car door with a firm slam and her driver put his foot on the accelerator.
    Sean folded the plastic his laundry had come in, dropped it in the wastebasket and carried the pile of Sunday newspapers to the easy chair by the window. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, L.A. Times, and the Hampstead Herald. Outside, the sun shone on the soaked and bedraggled hotel grounds. To keep on top of what was happening in the world, he perused the national news—mostly the same in each one—then went to the political news. All the possibles maneuvering for presidential nomination managed to get their names mentioned somehow.
    Most didn’t have a whisper of a chance. Some were a joke, some weren’t seriously running, just wanted to get their names out there in the country’s consciousness for future use—always another election coming up—some wanted to keep their names uppermost in the minds of their constituents, and some were nobodies with a single issue that most of the country had little interest in.
    The smart money was going with the incumbent