Robert, Her Billionaire Widower

“I’m not afraid of the Church,” said Marie. “This is my fourth novel in five years. I have written a novel about the mob as well, my second novel if you remember. I named actual mobsters in that book and nothing happened. The Church has a lot of people in it that abuse their power but, at the end of the day, it is still a religious institution. They won’t harm me, of this I am sure, or at the very least they are far less likely to harm me than the people that I have talked about before such as the Italian mafia.”

“You sound quite brave,” said Vanessa. “I would like to talk about your career from the very start.”

“Sure,” said Marie.

“So your first novel was the Cost of Freedom,” said Vanessa. “Tell me a little bit about it.”

“The Cost of Freedom was my first novel so I don’t think it is quite as good as people keep insisting it is,” said Marie with a chuckle. “That novel is essentially about four generations of a black family. It starts with an African slave that is brought to America. It continues with the story of his son, his grandson and finally his great grandson. He lives a docile and submissive life because he has his freedom beaten out of him. His son aspires to great things and buys his own freedom but finds that even though he is free he still does not have the civil liberties that a lot of white people have. His grandson participates in the civil rights movement and wins the right to vote. However, he still finds that he is not equal to his fellow man, people still assume that he is lazy or violent or some other such nonsense.

“The final character in the story, the great grandson of the original character, grows up in poverty. I draw parallels between his life and the life of his great grandfather, and show that even though slavery has been abolished, things are, more or less, still the same. He grows up without any kind of support structure and joins a gang because his surroundings offer him no other choice. Each of the characters die in a tragic way. The original character is killed by his master, his son dies because some racists don’t like the idea of him being free, his grandson dies because he is participating in a civil rights movement and his great grandson is killed by a police officer. In each death, the common thread is that the people doing the killing think that they are doing the right thing.

“I wanted to show that all of the progress that people think society has made is not nearly enough, that we all have a long way to go before the horrible atrocity that was slavery is completely accounted for.”

“That’s really intense,” said Vanessa. “It’s rather depressing too.”

“The civil rights abuse of black people is a very depressing topic,” said Marie. “I’m sure you know that to some extent, Vanessa. I think every black person knows that, even the ones that grow up in privileged environments. I think that we have to start looking at it a different way if we want things to get better, and I think that we are slowly starting to do that. I’m glad that my book played some role in this realization, however small that role may be.”

“Now about your second novel,” said Vanessa, “Mercy from Blood. It is about the Italian mob, this much you have already stated. What else can you tell me about this novel?”

“Well to say that it’s just about the Italian mob would be doing a disservice to the novel itself,” said Marie. “I think that it’s most important theme is that it analyzes the way that society functions, it analyzes the abuse of drugs and the lives of the people that make a living by selling these drugs. It’s important to look at that angle too, you know? It’s important to see that there is no black and white, that everyone has a story. That, above all, is what I try to do with my novels. It try to tell the whole story, I try to paint a picture that is shades of gray rather than stuck with the false dichotomy of black and white.”

“What about your third novel?” asked Vanessa.

Marie smiled again, slightly less warmly this time. She had probably been expecting Vanessa to ask about her third novel.

“Ah, yes,” said Marie. “Blood Money. That is a novel that is very dear to my heart.”

“That novel is about the treatment of people that work in sweatshops, am I right?” asked Vanessa.

“Indeed it is,” said Marie. “The people that work in sweatshops need to be treated right. There are people worth billions of dollars, money that they have earned by selling products they manufacture using slave labor that is gotten from sweatshops.”

“Indeed,” said Vanessa. “However, a lot of people have criticized you for that novel as well. They claim that you should not be talking about such conditions because your husband, Robert Wexler, is a billionaire that has earned quite a bit of money from sweatshops as well. Would you like to comment on that?”

“I would,” said Marie, “and thank you for asking about that, I had been hoping that you would.”

She did not look nervous at all. On the contrary, she looked slightly relieved. She had the look of a woman that was used to facing such questions and was glad that she would finally be able to counter this question on a live TV interview. Vanessa was glad that she was taking this so well. She was glad that she was not offended. This was an interview, after all. It was Vanessa’s responsibility as a journalist to make sure that the interview she conducted was not a puff piece. It was her duty to ensure that the interview showed the world the whole story, the complete picture. This was why it was so important for her to ask this question at this time. This was why it was so important to be able to ask Marie about something that she might not be comfortable talking about. For the good of journalism. For the good of the people that were watching this interview and hoping that it would get them some answers for the questions that they had been dying to ask.