Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

One morning he called Cecil into his office. "When you were in the funeral business in Kansas City, did you ever know a Mrs. Vita Green?"

"Know her?" Cecil said. "She was one of my best customers and still is. We do the flowers for all her parties."

"Is that so?"

"One year she gave a party for my theater group and we did her entire terrace in white roses. She has the whole top floor of the Highland Plaza apartment building, with a view from every room."

"Huh," said Hamm.

"You should see that place sometime. It is spectacular."

"I'd like to sometime. What does the husband do?"

"Just made a lot of money is all I know. She was divorced before I met her. Why?"

"No reason. I was just reading where this Mrs. Green was named head of some arts council and I was thinking that it might be a pretty good thing for the governor to get involved in."

Cecil looked surprised. "Really?"

"You're always bugging me about all that artsy stuff, aren't you? So I figure maybe I'll give it a try."

Cecil left the office, pleased that all his attempts to get Hamm interested in culture had finally paid off. Vita Green was one of the well-known cultural leaders in Kansas City and was admired by everyone, especially the men. She was a tall, striking woman of forty-three with shining black hair that she wore parted in the middle and pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck. She was always dressed exquisitely but simply, usually in bright red, or emerald green to match her eyes, with one spectacular pin on her right shoulder. At first glance she could have been mistaken for Spanish or Greek aristocracy. Few who met her would have guessed that she was 100 percent black Irish. But in addition to being a pure pleasure to look at, she was smart, witty, and a man's woman in every way. She could converse on any subject and hold her own in any crowd. But when Mrs. Vita Green received the note from the governor asking if they could set up a meeting to discuss the state of the arts in Missouri, her first reaction was to laugh. Vita, along with the rest of her crowd, had always assumed Sparks was some country bumpkin straight from the agriculture department who would certainly never be interested in anything like the arts. She called her good friend Peter and said, "You are not going to believe who wants to have a meeting with me."

Peter Wheeler, whom Hamm had defeated six years ago and who had turned down Hamm's offer to join his administration, was a gentleman and as gracious as ever. "I think you should, Vita, and at least hear him out. You never know, and he may be trying to branch out a little."

She thought about what he had said and after a moment replied, "I suppose you're right, Peteranything for art, as they say."

A few days later, a member of Hamm's staff called and informed her the governor was going to be in Kansas City for the day and asked if she would be available Wednesday morning between 8:30 and 9:00, before he did his speech at the Elks Club. Although it was an ungodly hour for her, she agreed to meet with him at the arts council building downtown.

When she arrived that morning he was already in the president's office making phone calls. A nervous secretary said, "He says you are to go right in." His back was to the door and he was on the phone with his feet propped up on the windowsill. She stopped at the door but her perfume did not. It traveled on before her and wafted across the desk and caused him to turn around and hang up instantly. In that perfume were the possibilities of every kind of exotic evening, whether on the roof of her penthouse or on a moonlit beach in the tropics. All this before she said "Hello, I'm Vita Green."

When he saw the woman he had only seen in the black-and-white newspaper photographs standing there in living color, Hamm suddenly forgot every other pretty girl he had ever seen in his life and as governor he saw quite a few, mostly blond beauty queens that had just won some contest or another. In his entire married life he had never thought of another woman in that way, but when Vita walked in, all thinking went out the door and slammed it shut. What stood before him now was the Rolls-Royce of womanhood. She was not a girl. She was a grown woman who, he could tell just by looking, was smarter and more powerful than he was by a mile and it excited him. He felt as if someone had just smacked him in the face with a million dollars. And as usual, it did not take him long to make up his mind.

What Vita Green now saw, jumping up and coming around the desk to shake her hand, was a stocky man about her height in low heels, not handsome in the way she was used to, certainly not sophisticated or well dressed. But when he grabbed her hand and held on to it as if he was afraid she would escape, she was somewhat taken by surprise by the energy and vitality and just the sheer heat of the man when he touched her. She was used to being admired by men but this one was different.

On first meeting her, most men were overwhelmed and usually fumbled and stepped back away from her, trying to think of a clever thing to say. But, clearly, Hamm Sparks was not trying to think of clever things or stepping back. There was nothing thought out or calculated about his approach.

He said exactly what was on his mind at the moment, he looked at her with the unguarded genuine appreciation of a male for a female, and said, "Mrs. Green, what is it going to take for me to get you? Because I'm telling you right now, I'm gonna move heaven and hell to get it. You want me to jump through hoops for you? Just tell me how high and how many."

Now she was taken aback and, to her astonishment, she found this total candor to be refreshing and completely irresistible. She had to smile. At that moment someone started knocking on the door.

She said, "Why don't we start with dinner?"

Not letting go of her hand and looking right into her eyes, he said, "Mrs. Green, I can't wait that long. How about lunch?"

"It's Vita. Where would you like to go?"

"I don't care. You tell me where and when…"

"How about the Downtown Club. Shall we say one o'clock?"

He nodded.

"Will we be discussing the arts, Governor Sparks?"

"It's Hamm, and I sincerely doubt it," he said.

She walked to the door and when she got there paused a moment and then turned around and looked back at him. "And by the way," she said, "I intend to be early."

"And I'll be there waiting."

All the way back to her apartment she had to laugh but the joke was on her. Of all the things she had expected to happen in her rather well planned life, a rube politician named Hamm Sparks was certainly the last person she would have guessed. That night after dinner he told her he had decided to stay in town for a few more days.

"Really?" she said. "Don't you have a state to run?"

He looked at her. "Honey, I can do two things at once."

I'll just bet you can, she thought.

And this is how the relationship of Vita and Hamm began. There was no courting, no games, just raw physical attraction. They both had met their match and both felt as if they had unexpectedly stumbled upon something they had been searching for for years. There was no struggle for power, only the start of a powerful merger.

No one had been surprised when Mrs. Vita Green was named governor's adviser on the arts. People were not in the least bit suspicious when Hamm spent more and more time in Kansas City and left his wife at home. She rarely went anywhere with him anyway, so no one noticed.

The fact that Vita and the governor were seen at some of the same events and parties did not cause eyebrows to raise; it seemed only natural. But then few knew that when the governor checked into his suite at the Muehlebach Hotel he walked in and walked right back out again, through the basement door, where Trooper Ralph Childress was waiting in the alley to take him over to Vita's apartment and would wait to take him back in the early morning.