Leo had enjoyed the last part of his public interview, because he had managed to pass along a message to Jane Early, who was probably listening or watching from their tiny apartment. Before very many minutes had passed, though, he regretted having agreed to appearing.
Even in the foul smoky air of Manhattan Island, some of the people who walked in the street close by recognized him. Some even called out his name and tried to talk to him. “Leo Torres! Hey man, come here a minute!” and similar things. Leo pretended he didn’t hear them.
“Before that interview, I could have walked these streets forever and no one would call out my name,” he thought as he trudged forward without looking to one side or the other.
Leo was used to these streets. As a child he had ducked through pedestrians and automobiles. He had been born to the cacophony of New York City streets. Today, the air was just as dark and odorous as he had always remembered it, but most of the sounds were gone. There were no automobiles running on the streets of New York since the moratorium on fossil rules had begun. No automobiles ran anywhere.
Like everyone else, Leo walked in the broad street. Even though he couldn’t see even one block ahead through the haze, he always knew exactly where he was, where he was going, and about how long it would take to get there. “Twenty five minutes more or less and she will be next to me,” he thought with almost a smile.
Meanwhile, Leo took some satisfaction in his opinion that the miasmic haze of New York was not as bad as it had been. The moratorium on fossil fuels, according to the statistics, was slowly clearing away the pollution and halting the invasions of the warming oceans against coastal lands. The revolution was working, and Leo Torres could take some pride in taking part in it, even though his role was small. It added a spring to his step which brought him quickly to the tiny apartment he was sharing with the main love of his life.
He knocked, three hard, two soft, then pause and start again. That was their signal. Almost immediately, he saw the peephole darken with Jane’s eye on the other side, then the door swung open and she was hugging him with both arms and both legs. He staggered inside.
“You heard?” he asked.
“I watched it on the laptop,” she blurted out between kisses. She went on kissing his neck and head as they fell back together on the couch.
“I love this place!” Jane Early exclaimed. “How did you get it?”
“It’s just one of several that the administration uses for us petty bureaucrats. Don’t get too used to it because I should be getting another assignment tomorrow, and God only knows where they will send me.”
“What is all this about a new government? Aren’t things going pretty well now with the administration in charge?” Jane’s voice was like birds singing to Leo.
“First I’ve heard of it, but it kind of makes sense. Nobody actually knows what’s going on or who is in charge. The whole population has been focusing on what we don’t want – war, pollution – and not on what we do want, whatever that might be.
‘For myself, I think I just about have everything right here in my lap, or sort of in my lap… What are you doing?”
“I’m getting your pants off, what do you think?”
A few minutes later, Leo Torres was peacefully asleep on the floor. Jane Early lay close beside him watching the sweat drip in rivulets from their bodies. His skin was dark and, because of all the perspiration, satiny and shiny. Hers was pinkish, but visibly returning to her usual cool pale shade. Evaporation was slowly comforting them.
“I’m bewildered,” she thought, almost aloud. She was bewildered because she felt so strongly for Leo, more strongly than she could remember ever having felt about anything, but also bewildered because of something else. She had been struck by Leo’s live video interview, and not just because of the little love note he sent her way. She wondered about the scope of what she was getting into with Leo, and about the scope of Leo himself.
Since they had first met, Leo had told her that he played a very minor part in political processes. He said that he was one of many young people who supported the revolution and carried out whatever tasks he was given, including his post-revolutionary role as a commissioner solving minor problems in places far from the center of change.
But the interviewer in the video kept insisting that Leo was far more important. He even called him a top leader. Leo had explained to her before, just as he tried to explain to the interviewer, that he was not and had never been in leadership and that his so-called “fame” was simply a mistake. At the same time, though, Jane wondered if Leo might be a bigger figure than he admitted or even wanted.
“If he is going toward greatness,” Jane asked herself, “do I just go with him?” Something about the idea disturbed her. She was sure she loved Leo, but she also loved everything around him. She loved the little apartment they were in, and she loved the dark mysterious city around them. She loved the excitement of the times, and she was eager to embrace it all, Leo included.
Leo was included, she realized, but not the whole of everything.
“No point in getting ahead of myself. He gets a new assignment tomorrow.”