"I suppose you think it's black people."

  The woman had pulled me away from a little clutch of reporters outside a courtroom.  Dressed in Sunday best to my wrinkled four day old outfit.  "I probably don't.  I don't see color."  She undid a purse snap.  "That's what my grandson said you'd say." Her smooth, well-taken care of hands paused on the big handle of the purse.  "M'am.  What are we talking about here?"  She looked across the hallway at the flag.  "That did this.  Who did this to Our Country."  

  I reached out and patted her hands.  "I'm just me.  As a journalist I just report on all sides.  I wish someone had not used that word, infiltrated.  But, from what I understand," she gave my patting hand back to me.  "Yes?"  I looked at my little stack of reporter's notebooks in my lap not confident I really understood.  "The pieces add up to the facts that somehow people did.  I mean, you know, I talk to a lot of people, and, and most people were not thinking about spys and operatives that would, you know, want to harm us." 

  "I know that." One hand was reaching into the purse.  "My grandson said to get these to you," she pulled a taped up envelope from the purse.  "He trusts you to," she let the envelope fall on my lap when I wouldn't just take it, "Do the right thing." She re-snapped the purse and promptly stood.  Smoothing skirt on her backside.  "Nice meeting you," she said.  Her heels not noisy but not unheard as she walked away.

  "Here hold this," the man thrust the boom at me and dug through his pockets for car keys.  "I'm just gonna put this here," a woman said as she wheeled a camera mounted on a tripod on wheels to where I'd sat on a knee wall resting an elbow holding a boom on my thigh.  "I have to run to my car to smoke."  

  "Vhat are vee vilming today?" A man in a vintage 50's suit came and asked me.  "Not entirely sure.  It seems like housewives but, er, the people seem, uh, foreign." 

  "Great to see you got some work girl," a hooded person cupped hands and hollah'd.  "Oh, I did not." I muttered.  "Get up," the camera woman ordered.  She snapped the battery case on a light meter closed.  "What are you doing here anyway?"  

  "Process of elimination," I head pointed to a skyscraper.  

  "Sorry to hear it." 

  "Oh, I wasn't aiming for the Networks anyway." 

  Two of the actors arguing were getting louder and louder.  A man in a jogging suit came and asked the camerawoman, "Is this in the script?" She snapped back, "I wouldn't know.  I'm not her."  She pointed the light meter at a woman with a script.

  "You're chariot has arrived," the normally pensive writer smiled at complex mission accomplished.  The other woman frowned.