Hawley looked at the bright lights, the senators stared at him, even the bored ones had stopped and watched to see if he would be able to speak. They didn’t want to listen to him twenty years ago. They didn’t want to listen to him forty years before that, but now they looked at him impatiently and Firth’s attorney was whispering to Firth, trying to hide his smile with his hand. You can’t force a story that doesn’t want to be told, or stop when everyone’s listening for it. All he had to do now was speak.
He pulled the microphone closer, “because Firth shouldn’t lead.”
The senators looked confused, still not sure he wasn’t carzy. “Firth is on his own mission,” he said.
Senator Waers leaned forward and asked, “and precisely what is that?”
Hawley looked back at Firth, “Himself.”
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Somehow I'm just noticing how perfect your sense of literary timing is with this book. (I think because you do it so elegantly & effortlessly.) Here, you really use the rhythms of speech, the repetitions, even the line spacing to create a wonderful tension - and a terrific pay-off. Great!
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