The elevator doors opened on the sixth floor. Walter stamped outside. He had Stoli in his room, and he needed a drink. He was angry with Brent; he was angry with the idiots in Tallahassee. Politics. The years passed, and nothing changed. Every election was a race to the bottom.

Brent tapped the young girl on the shoulder and held the elevator open with one hand. She didn’t take off her sunglasses, but she popped an earphone out of her ear. ‘Huh?’

‘I like your music,’ Brent said.

‘Whatever,’ the girl replied. She replaced the earphone before Brent could say anything more. Walter smiled, and Brent looked deflated. The girl was good with a brush-off.

The odd thing was, as the doors closed, Walter studied the girl and thought: I’ve seen you before.

*

Peach Piper tugged the black wig off her head and shoved it inside her satchel purse along with her iPod.

Her real hair was blond, cut super-short in a page-boy style that barely swished across her freckled forehead. She whipped off her sunglasses. Her eyes were Atlantic blue. She yanked her tank top over her head – no bra – unzipped her short-shorts and shivered in the elevator in nothing but purple bikini panties. Eyeing the elevator buttons, she dug a Magic Kingdom T-shirt and loose white cargo pants out of her purse and practically jumped into them. She replaced her flip-flops with Crocs and her cross earring with a big gold hoop.

When she was done, she grabbed a crushable nylon backpack from inside the purse, squeezed the purse and her clothes inside, and shrugged the backpack onto both shoulders just as the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor. A black woman and her young son boarded the elevator, and the boy looked at Peach and giggled and whispered to his mother. Peach realized that her cargo pants were unzipped, and she discreetly tugged the zipper up as she pushed the button to return to the lobby.

The doors opened on the sixth floor again to let on two more convention delegates. She noticed with fleeting concern that Walter Fleming and Brent Reed remained in the hotel hallway. Fleming’s back was to her. That was good, because the old union boss was the one Peach was worried about. He was smart and observant. Brent Reed was just a moron. He looked right at her in the elevator, and Peach gave him a big toothy smile, and he was completely oblivious.

He hadn’t recognized her from the bar the previous night, either, when she was a redhead in a little black dress. Or from the food truck near the riverfront, when she was a Marlins fan with a baseball cap and gold tracksuit.