Homerville.

[stephendare]

Alex Golden looked out of his spectacularly appointed office through the glass over the auspices of Riverside Avenue.

The transplanted palm trees gave this lovely stretch of the river in between Downtown and the historic neighborhood west of the city a vintage Florida feeling, even if none of majestic trees were indigenous to the area.  For that matter, neither were the intricately detailed faux cast iron lamp posts that had been installed a few years earlier, but combined with the massive live oaks and azaleas that crowded the historic way, they managed to evoke a feeling of both victorian history and the popular conception of Florida.  Even if it wasnt Homerville's heritage, it was good enough for Alex.

Shifting his view, he could see the edge of the property belonging to Prescott Harriman, the prefab construction billionaire whose corporate headquarters resembled a massive yacht that had been tragically run aground on the shores of the St. Johns River.

He took his glasses off and strode over to his desk.

He reached over to the small but meaningful collection of photos, passing over his newlywed photo and picking up instead a college era photo of him and the charmingly blonde young god who had filled his life for 20 years.

He ran his thumb across the glass that protected the old photo and sighed.

He punched a few numbers onto his phone.

"Mayor's Office. How may I direct your call?"

"Hi Kelly" he said, "This is Alex Golden, from Southeast Communications Solutions."

"Hello Alex!, I suppose your looking for the Mayor...!"

He chuckled lightly.  "Yes, I suppose I am."


-------------------------------------------


Mayor John Gates was the second of consecutive mayors to break the steady stream of predictably good old boy stereotypes that had filled the top office of Homerville for over a hundred and sixty years.

Oh to be sure there had been good looking mayors before, stalwartly handsome types who ran the gamut between outright piracy and clean cut souther establishment types, but the voters of the massively sprawling town had lately developed a taste for laid back blondes with contagious smiles.

Gates fit the bill perfectly.

He was the scion of a rather briefly accrued fortune.

His father, a rags to riches story of the New South had accumulated gazillions of dollars and established an Empire in one generation starting with a lowly gas station on the cities mostly poor and mostly black Northside.  In the process he had been alternately reviled and blackballed by the aging gentry of the yachtclub set on Pirates Cove Island and admired and revered by the newly rising Southside business set.

Harvey Gates had two driving passions, as far as anyone could tell about the elusive, tough old man who had fathered the Mayor of Homerville.  Money and revenge.

-----------------------------

Rusty Renfield, the short and invisibly grimy lesbian attorney who had served as the City of Homerville's GLBT community liaison stomped out onto the porch of her Springville Mansion.

The neighborhood had made huge strides over the past few years, but even so, there were still moments like this.

She stared down at the huge steaming pile of human feces that had been freshly laid at the bottom of her steps and yelled out after the retreating backside of the shambling dirty man who had left it.

"Thats right, knothead!  you better run!  Next time Im going to pump your ass full of lead!"

"goddamit!" she exclaimed angrily to herself.

She stomped back inside the house to get her cell phone.  Something was going to have to give.

She angrily punched the cell phone number belonging to Jackie Gates.

[Lunican]

Is this a story you are writing?

[tufsu1]

take note that there is a town called Homerville in southeastern Georgia...wouldn't want to cause any confusion!