Pinky strode toward the group, the last lingering effects of the extremely serviceable practice kiss with Samir burning off in the heat of her outrage. (Okay, so the kiss had been more than serviceable. It might, in fact, have been the best kiss she’d ever had, real boyfriends included. And somewhere along the way, she’d… stopped practicing. But that was an issue for another day.) (Seriously, though. Where had Samir learned to kiss like that?? As far as Pinky knew, he’d never even had a girlfriend before. Where was the buttoned-up, boring, Harvard lawyer–wannabe mama’s boy she’d loved to make fun of?)
The woman in the crisp business suit was briskly giving orders, and the men were nodding but not saying much themselves. The woman was obviously in charge. The two older women who’d tried to talk to her were standing off to the side, deep in conversation. Pinky walked up to them, and Samir and Dolly joined her on either side.
The black woman was the first to notice them. “Hi,” she said, a small wrinkle between her eyebrows. The white woman just looked at them, her eyes slightly narrowed.
“Hi.” Pinky stuck out her hand, and the two women took turns shaking it, looking slightly confused. “Pinky Kumar. These are my, um, people, Samir and Dolly.”
“I’m Gloria,” the black woman said, “and this is my wife, Dolores.” Dolores gave the three of them a suspicious glare.
Pinky glanced over at the businesswoman and her two lackeys. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with that woman, and I want to volunteer my time.”
“Volunteer your time for what, honey?” Gloria asked.
“Anything at all,” Pinky said. “Whatever your plan is to stop the razing of the habitat.” Gloria and Dolores looked at her blankly. “You… do have a plan, right?”
“Nothing concrete yet,” Dolores said, slightly cagily, Pinky thought. “Why? Why are you so interested?”
“This habitat was built when I was, like, three years old,” Pinky explained. “And every summer I come back to—”
“So you’re a summer person,” Dolores said, folding her arms.
Pinky blinked. “Yeah. My parents have a house out by Ellingsworth Lake.”
Gloria looked over at the woman in the business suit, who was now tromping back around toward the parking lot with the two men. Looking back at Pinky, she said, “Whatever we do, it’s going to take some serious commitment and some serious work. It’s not just a side project for when you get bored.”
Pinky shook her head. “I won’t get bored. I love this habitat. Some of the best memories in my life happened here.”
“You don’t know Pinky, so you can’t know this,” Dolly explained, smiling, “but she’s the last person who’d ever get bored of a project like this.” She held open the tote bag containing DQ’s seemingly lifeless body. Dolores and Gloria peeked in and their eyes got wide, as if they were suddenly realizing they may be dealing with a group of seriously unhinged teenagers. “That’s Drama Queen. Pinky rescued her and plans to rehome her at a wildlife refuge. She’s also established raccoon hospitals, pigeon recovery centers.… You get the idea. She never gets bored.”
Pinky tossed her cousin a grateful smile.
Dolores leaned back from the bag and eyed the three of them carefully. “Well, dears, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your pet rat is dead.”
“She’s not a rat,” Pinky explained. “DQ’s a possum, and she’s just pretending to be dead. She’ll wake up in a bit.”
“Pinky’s also ridiculously stubborn,” Samir put in, his hands in his pockets. “Seriously. When I first got here, I wanted to drown her in the lake.” Pinky snapped her head to look at him. What the hell was he doing? “But now…,” he continued, “I don’t know. I’m beginning to see how stubbornness can be a really good quality. She can help you with whatever you might need help with. She’s really convincing and she doesn’t take no for an answer.”
Pinky’s anger melted away into something softer as she caught Samir’s eye. Was that how he saw her? She had no idea any of his thoughts about her hardheadedness were remotely positive.
Dolores didn’t look convinced by their soliloquies, but Pinky could see Gloria softening. “Look,” she said. “We’re thinking about canvassing the area downtown with some flyers, talking to other residents, maybe setting up a town hall meeting to figure out what the best approach to all this is. Would you be interested in helping out with the canvassing and word-of-mouth?”
Pinky nodded eagerly. “Yes, very much.”
Dolores shook her head and sighed, and Gloria said quietly, “Let’s give her a chance.” Turning to Pinky, she said, “Okay. Here’s my card.” She pulled out a business card from her pocket that said: G+D LANDSCAPING. There was a phone number on it. “Give me a call later today and we’ll go from there. No texting. Call me.”
Pinky took the card and stuck out her hand again. “Done. Thanks for giving me a chance. I won’t let you or the butterflies down.”
Gloria smiled a little and shook her head, as if she couldn’t figure out if Pinky was being serious or not. “All right, then.” And she and Dolores walked off in the direction of the parking lot.
Pinky turned to Dolly and Samir, grinning. “Guys. Thank you for backing me up like that.” Then she noticed what Samir was doing. “Are you taking notes?”
He looked up from his planner. “What? It’s just so I won’t forget the details.”
Pinky rolled her eyes and looked at Dolly. “Can you believe this guy?”
“Hey,” she said, “he’s your fake boyfriend.”
Pinky snorted. Then, getting more serious, she said, “So I guess I’m going to call Gloria tomorrow.”
Samir looked up at her as he put his planner away. “Right. And you’re sure you want to get involved? I mean, those two women are strangers.”
“It has to be better than sitting around doing nothing,” Pinky countered. When she saw the hesitation on both their faces, she added, “Guys, come on. Do you really want this gorgeous beauty to be completely decimated just so they can put up luxury apartments here? Do you want some snobbish, snide woman in a business suit to destroy the beating heart of this place, where so many hundreds of people have shared so many hundreds of happy memories, just to put up some boxy, soulless, uncreative cubicles? Just so she can add piles of money to the money piles she already has? What’s the point of that? Shouldn’t we stand up and say how we feel about it rather than just sitting back and letting this happen to us?”
She could sense it, the shift in their thinking, as she continued to speak. When she finished, Samir spoke first. His eyes shining, he said, “You know what? What the heck. I’m in.”
“Really?” Pinky asked, grinning.
“Hell yeah,” he said. “This is completely against the rules and completely crazy. I mean, completely.” He paused. “But it’s for the greater good, right?” Samir’s eyes were a tad feverish, and he really looked like he was asking for confirmation, so Pinky nodded.