Windfall Page 0,1

to me. He was a big man, bulky, with implanted hair and big, overwhitened teeth, laser-corrected blue eyes, and a face made unnaturally smooth by dermabrasion and Botox. Okay, the Botox was just a guess, but he was holding on to his fleeing, screaming youth with both fists.

Camera Two lit up. Marvin sauntered around, quipped with the anchors, Janie and Kurt, and then turned to the weather map. He started talking about a cold front approaching from the southeast... only there wasn't one; there was a front stalled at the Georgia border that didn't have nearly enough zippity doo dah to make it across the state line anytime in the next, oh, year. Behind him, the Chyron graphics did all kinds of cool zooms and swoops, showing animations and time-lapsed satellite cloud movements, which meant zero to about ninety-five percent of the population tuning in.

Marvin was a certified professional meteorologist. A degreed climatologist.

Marvin knew dick about the weather, but he was damn lucky. At least so far as I could tell, and believe me, I could tell a lot.

He walked past the animated map, and the camera followed him and focused on me as he stopped in frame. I turned the smile on Marvin, wishing it was a really big cannon.

"Good morning, Joanne!" he boomed cheerfully. He'd snarled at me earlier, while pushing past me in the hallway on his way to makeup. "Ready to talk about what's coming up?"

"Sure, Marvin!" I bubbled right back, perky as a cheerleader on speed. I used to have a real job. I used to protect people. Save lives. How the hell did I get here?

He wasn't listening to my internal whining. "Great! Well, we know how rough the weather's been the past few days, especially for our friends up the coast. We already know today's going to be bright and sunny, but let's tell our viewers out there in the Sunshine State what it's going to be like for them outside tomorrow!"

The camera pulled focus. I was center stage.

I held on to my smile like it was a life preserver. "Well, Marvin, I'm sure tomorrow's going to be a beautiful day for going outside and soaking up some-"

Marvin had taken the required number of steps out of frame, and just as I said the word "soaking," the bored, cigar-chomping stagehand standing off-camera to my left yanked a rope.

About twenty gallons of water dumped from buckets directly over my head, right on target. It hurt. The bastards had chilled it, or else it was a lot colder up in those rafters than down here on the stage; the stuff felt ice-cold as it splashed off the plastic rain hat, straight down the back of my neck, to splash down into the stupid yellow rain boots.

I was standing in a kiddie pool with yellow rubber duckies on it. Most of the water made it in. I gasped and looked surprised, which wasn't hard; even when you expect it, it's tough not to be surprised by the idea that someone will actually do a thing like this to you.

Or that you will not kill them for it.

The anchors and Marvin laughed like lunatics. I kept smiling, took my rain hat off, and said, "Well, that's the weather in Florida, folks, just when you least expect it..."

And they hit me with the last bucket. Which they hadn't warned me about.

"Oh, boy, sorry about that, Weather Girl!" Marvin whooped, and came back into frame as I shoved my dripping hair back and tried to keep on smiling. "Guess we're in for a few showers tomorrow, eh?"

"Seventy percent chance," I gritted out. It wasn't quite so perky as I'd planned.

"So, moms, pack those umbrellas and raincoats for the kids in the morning! Joanne, it's time for our weather lesson of the day: Can you tell our viewers the difference between weather and climate?"

A climate is the weather in an area averaged over a long period of time, you moron. I thought it. I didn't say it. I kept smiling blankly at him as I asked, "I don't know, Marvin, what is the difference?" Because I was, after all, the straight woman, and this was penance for some horrible crime I'd committed in a previous life. As Genghis Khan, apparently.

He looked straight into the camera with his most serious expression and said, "You can't weather a tree, but you can