Chapter I

He Was A Big Fellow, Looking Seriously Pale On The Streets Of Harlem in deep summer. I am small and not so dark, not very threatening to Caucasians; I do not strut my stuff.

We shook hands. My inability to recall that particular moment more precisely is disappointing: the handshake is the threshold act, the beginning of politics. I've seen him do it two million times now, but I couldn't tell you how he does it, the right-handed part of it--the strength, quality', duration of it, the rudiments of pressing the flesh. I can, however, tell you a whole lot about what he does with his other hand. He is a genius with it. He might put it on your elbow, or up by your biceps: these are basic, reflexive moves. He is interested in you. He is honored to meet you. If he gets any higher up your shoulder--if he, say, drapes his left arm over your back, it is somehow less intimate, more casual. He'll share a laugh or a secret then--a light secret, not a real one--flattering you with the illusion of conspiracy. If he doesn't know you all that well and you've just told him something "important," something earnest or emotional, he will lock in and honor you with a two-hander, his left hand overwhelming your wrist and forearm. He'll flash that famous misty look of his. And he will mean it. Anyway, as I recall it, he gave me a left-hand-just-above-the-elbow plus a vaguely curious "ah, so you're the guy I've been hearing about" look, and a follow-me nod. I didn't have the time, or presence of mind, to send any message back at him. Slow emotional reflexes, I guess. His were lightning. He was six meaningful handshakes down the row before I caught up. And then I fell in, a step or two behind, classic staff position, as if I'd been doing it all my life. (I had, but not for anyone so good.)

We were sweeping up into the library, the librarian in tow, and now he had his big ears on. She was explaining her program and he was in heavy listening mode, the most aggressive listening the world has ever known: aerobic listening. It is an intense, disconcerting phenomenon--as if he were hearing quicker than you can get the words out, as if he were sucking the information out of you. When he gives full ear--a rare enough event; he's usually ingesting from two or three sources--his listening becomes the central fact of the conversation. He was doing this now, with the librarian, and she was staggering under it. She missed a step; he reached out, steadied her. She was middle-aged, pushing fifty, hair dyed auburn to blot the gray, unexceptional except for her legs, which were shocking, a gift from God. Had he noticed the legs when she almost went down on the stair? I couldn't tell. Howard Ferguson III had insinuated himself next to me, as we nudged up the crowded staircase, his hand squeezing my elbow--Lord, these were touchy fellows--saying: "Glad you changed your mindjack's really excited you could do this."

"What are we doing?" I asked. Howard had called and invited me to meet Governor Jack Stanton, who might or might not be running for president. The governor was stopping in New York on his way to do some early, explanatory wandering through New Hampshire. The invitation came with an intriguing address--in Harlem, of all places. (There was no money in Harlem and this was the serious money-bagging stage of the campaign, especially for an obscure Southern governor.) It also came with shameless flattery. "You're legendary," Howard had said in a dusty rnidwestern voice, cagey and playful. "He wants to lure you out of retirement."

Retirement: I had fled Washington after six years with Congressman William Larkin. It had been my first job out of school--and I was a victim of his upward mobility, from member to whip to majority leader. Too much. I hadn't been ready for power; I'd kind of enjoyed the back benches. It was too soon for me to be someone, the majority leader's guy, the guy you had to get with if you wanted something in or out of this or that. And so, on my thirtieth birthday, an epiphany: "I'm sorry, sir--I need a break," I told the congressman. "Don't you believe in what we're doing?" he asked.

You mean, counting heads? Lemme outta here. I was going out with a woman named March then; she was great-looking, but she worked for Nader and came equipped with a lack of irony guaranteed to survive the most rigorous crash testing. I found myself having fantasies of working my way through the months: April, May, June. . . . I don't remember what I told her. I told her something. "Henry, isn't this a little young for a midlife crisis?" she asked.

No. I called Philip Noyce at Columbia. I'd known him all my life. He was a colleague of Father's--back when, back before Father left Mother and began his World's Most Obscure Universities Tour. In the event, Philip got use a gig. I taught legislative process. As midlife crises go, it had been a busman's holiday.

Now I thought I might be ready to resume . . . things.

Anyway, I was curious. What was Jack Stanton doing up in Harlem when he should have been down on Wall Street trying to impress the big spenders? Was he trying to impress me? I doubted it. More likely, he had invited me along for racial cover. I was, I realized, the only black face in his entourage. Howard Ferguson certainly was about as far as you could get from dark. I noticed a discrete bauble of perspiration moving diagonally down the side of his forehead into his weird Elvis sideburn, as if his sweat were rationed: he was so dry, so thin-lipped austere--and his eyes burned so hard--one imagined that whatever juice he had inside was precious; if he didn't stay lubricated, he might catch fire. Howard was legendary himself, sort of vestigial, a prairie ghost. He was born to a line of arsonists. His great-grandfather Firefly Ferguson had set the wheat fields ablaze and run for governor from a jail cell. Howard wore Firefly's parched, sandy face, thinning hair parted in the middle--and a pink flowered Liberty tie: I do not take this life, these lawyer clothes seriously, it said. His role in the Stanton operation was elusive--months later I'd still be trying to figure it out. He was a man who never tipped his hand, who never expressed an opinion in a meeting, and yet give off the sense that he had very powerful convictions, too powerful to be hinted among strangers. He had known the governor forever, since the antiwar days. "You ever been to an adult literacy program?" he asked, then chuckled. "Jack eats this shit up. Says it's like going to church."

So it was. It was a better room than the usual government-issue Formica and cinder block. There were none of the relentlessly cheery posters of books and owls. It was a dark, solemn place--a WPA library. The bookcases were oak and went most of the way up the walls; there was a mural above, a Bentonian, popular-front vision of biplanes buzzing the Statue of Liberty, locomotives rushing through wheat fields, glorious, muscular laborers going to work--a Howard Ferguson dreamscape. (They didn't need hortatory READ BOOKS propaganda back then; there were other struggles.) The class was seated around a large, round oak table. They were what the WPA muralist had in mind: a saintly proletariat.

The librarian, condescending to them in the reflexive, unconsciously insulting manner of public servants everywhere, introduced the visitor: "Governor Jack Stanton, who has been a great friend of continuing education, and is now running for . . ." She tossed a flirtatious look his way.

"Cover," he said.

"Do you want to say a few--"

"No, no--y'all go on ahead," he purred. "Don't mind me." He took a seat away from the table, deftly respecting the integrity of the class. I sat diagonally across the mom from him; I could watch him watching them. Howard stood behind me, leaning against a bookcase. They introduced themselves. They were waitresses, dishwashers and janitors, most in their twenties and thirties, people with night jobs. Each read a little; the women had an easier time of it than the men, who really struggled. And then they said something about their lives. It was very moving. The last to go was Dewayne Smith, who weighed three hundred pounds easy and was a short-order chef. "They just kept passin' me up, y'know?" he said. "Couldn't read a lick, had a . . . learning disbility." He looked over to the librarian to make sure he had said it right.

"Dewayne's dyslexic," she said.

"They just kept a passin' me up--third grade, fourth grade--and I'm like too proud, y'know? It was like no one noticed anyways. I sit in the back, I ain't a mouthy broth--person, I don't cause no trouble, I stick to my own self. So I go on through, all the ways through. I graduate elementary school. They send me to Ben Franklin, general studies. They coulda sent me to the Bronx Zoo. No one ever tell me nothin'. No one ever say, `Dewayne, you can't read--what you gonna do with your sorry ass?' Scuse me." He looked over at the governor, who smiled, urging him on.

"This was twenty years ago," the librarian interjected. "We're better about catching those things now"--as if that canceled out such monumental callousness, the numb stupidity of the system. "Anyway, graduation come. My momma come. She take the day off from the laundry where she work, puts on her church dress. She don't have a clue nothin's wrong; me neither. I been skatin' through? So we're there and Dr. Dalemberti is callin' out the names and what we did, like 'Sharonna Harris, honors,' or `Tyrone Kirby, Regents diploma,' and everyone's gotta just stand there on the stage, while they come up one by one. So they get to my name--goin' alphabetical, y'know--and Dr. Dalemberti says, so everyone hear it, `Dewayne Smith receive a certificate of attendance.' You can hear people buzzin', coupla folks laughin' a little, and I gotta go walk up there, and get this . . . it look just like a diploma, y'know? Same kind of paper--funny, how I'm thinking people won't notice 'cause it's the same kind of paper. But that don't work: everyone know the truth now. And I'm thinkin': Sucker. These folks expect you a fool, they got rid of everyone else can't read, they drop out. And my reward for stickin' around is--I gotta stand there, burnin', and I'm tryin' not to look at anyone, tryin' not to look too stupid, y'know? But feelin' stupid as a rock. The girl come up after me gigglin' a little, still laughin"bout me, y'know? She nervous cause she gotta stand next to the idiot. Like it's catchin' or somethin'. And I see Momma out there with her hat on and her purse in her lap. She wearin' her white church gloves. She got her gasses on, and tears cornin' down from behind her glasses, like someone hurt her bad, like someone die."

I kind of lost it then. I tried to gulp down the sob, but Dewayne had caught me somewhere deeper, and earlier, than politics. Damn. I shuddered, tears leaked out the side of my eye. And: Do you know how it happens at a moment like that, when you are embarrassed like that, you will look directly--reflexively--at the very person you don't want to see you? I looked over at Jack Stanton. His face was beet-red, his blue eyes glistening and tears were rolling down his cheeks. The first thought was--relief relief and amazement, and a sudden, sharp, quite surprising affinity. This was followed, quickly, by a caveat: Weakness? Ed Muskie in the snow in New Hampshire? But that evaporated, because Stanton had launched himself into motion, rubbing his cheeks off with the back of his hands--everyone knew now that he had lost it--standing up, standing over the table, hands on the shoulders of two of the students, leaning over the table toward Dewayne and saying, "I am so very, very deeply grateful that you'd share that with us, Dewayne." It wasn't nearly so bad as the words sound now. He had the courage of his emotions. "And I think it is time we made it impossible--I mean impossible--for anyone to get lost in the system like you did. We have to learn to cherish our young people. But most of all, I want to thank you for believing, for having faith--faith that you can Overcome the odds and learn and succeed." It was getting a little thick, and he seemed to sense it. He got off the soapbox, kicked back, circled the table over to where Dewayne was; I had him in profile now. "Takes some courage, too. How many y'all tell your friends and family where you're going when you come here?" There were smiles.

"Let me tell you a story," he said. "It's about my uncle Charlie. This happened just after I was born, so I only got it from my momma--but I know it's true. Charlie came home from the war a hem. He had been on Iwo Jima--you know, where they raised the flag? And he had taken out several machine-gun nests of _laps . Japanese soldiers, who had a squad of his buddies pinned down. First one with a grenade. Second one by himself, with his rifle and bayonet and bare hands. They found him with a knife in his gut and his hands around an enemy soldier's throat. He had two bullets in him, too."

Dewayne said, "Shit."

"Yeah, that's right," Stanton said, moving clockwise around the table now, like a big cat. "They gave him the Medal of Honor. President Truman did. And then he came home to our little town, Grace Junction. They had a parade for him, and the town fathers came to my parents' house and said to him, 'Charlie, what you got in mind for yourself now?' Charlie said he didn't know. Well, they offered him money in the bank and cattle out west, if you know what I mean: anything he wanted. The mayor said Charlie could have a full scholarship to the state university. The banker said he could understand if Charlie didn't want to go back to school after all he'd been through, so he was offering him a management job, big future, at the bank. The sawmill owner--we're from piney-woods country--says, 'Charlie, you may not want to be cooped up in a bank, con-le manage my crew' And you know what? Damned if Charlie didn't turn them all down." Stanton stopped. He waited. Oite of the women said, "So what he do'n?

"Nothin'. He just lay down on the couch, smoked his Luckies, let himself go. . . . No one could get him off that couch."

"Oh, I got it," said a wiry Hispanic with a penncil-thin mustache.

"He got his head fu-- ah, mess up. Them post-dramatic things, right?"

"Nope," Stanton said, very calmly. "It was just that, well . . . He couldn't read."

Heads snapped, someone said What?, someone whistled, someone said, "No shit."

"He couldn't read, and he was embarrassed, and he didn't want to tell anyone," Stanton said. "He had the courage to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, but he didn't have the strength to do what each of you has done, what--each--of--you--is doing--right-here. He didn't have the courage to admit he needed help, and to find it. So I want you to know that I understand, I appreciate what you are doing here, I honor your commitment. And when people ask me, 'Jack Stanton, why are you always spending so much money and so much time and so much effort on adult literacy programs?' I tell them: Because it gives me a chance to see real courage. It inspires me to be stronger. I am so grateful you've let me visit with you today." I have seen better speakers and heard better speeches, but I don't think I'd ever heard--at least, not till that moment--a speaker who measured his audience so well and connected so precisely. It was an impressive bit of politics. And they were all over him then, clapping his back, shaking his hand, hugging him. He didn't back off, keep his space, the way most pols would; he leaned into them, and seemed to get as much satisfaction from touching them, draping his big arm over their shoulders, as they got from him. He had this beatific, slightly goofy look on. And then Dewayne said, "Wait a minute." The room fell silent. "What about Charlie?"

"Well, it took a while," Stanton said, more conversationally. They were all friends now. "He started hanging 'round the high school when I got up there. He, uh--" Stanton was embarrassed. He was making a decision. He went ahead with it--"Well, I was the manager of the varsity baseball team and Charlie liked to sit with me on the bench, helping out--and that grew into helping out around the gymnasium, and finally they offered hint a job when Mr. Krause died." "Who Mr. Krause? What job he got?"

"Oh, he was the school janitor."

"No shit."

He stayed with them for a time, answering questions, signing autographs. The library lady pitched Stanton about the need for more money--there was a long waiting list of people who wanted to get into that program but had to be turned away. Then they all followed him back downstairs, and out to the car. Howard Ferguson and I trailed the crowd. Howard squeezed my arm gently, just above the elbow, kind of chuckled--a strangled guffaw--and shrugged, as if to say: What can I say? "How do you know hint?" I asked, having to ask something. "Oh, a long time," he said.

The governor was down on the sidewalk now, chugging through another round of meaningful handshakes. Ferguson and I stood over by the car. "So what do you think?" Howard asked.

I said something enthusiastic, but I really was wondering: Is he expecting me to say something like "Where do I sign up?" Didn't they want to sit down and say, Here's what we're doing and here's what we'd like you to do and what do you think about this issue, or that person, and how do you think someone should run for president of the United States these days?

Stanton came over. Looked at me. So? "Well, that was something," I said.

"I can't believe we can't rustle up enough dough to make this available to anyone who wants it," he said. (What was this going to be--a policy discussion?) "Why didn't you guys fund it better?" Because my former boss was a weenie. But do you just say that straight off? If you badmouth the old boss, what does that tell the prospective new boss about your loyalty? "Well, it was late, we got trapped in a formula fight," I said and gobbledygooked on about rules and amendments and assorted horseshit, but he didn't listen very long. In fact, he turned away halfway through a sentence--no pretense about just shutting me down--and asked Ferguson, "Where?" "Times editorial board," Howard said laconically. "You're only about a half hour late right now."

Stanton suddenly was red in the face--and I mean the mood had changed with blinding speed: from sunshine to tornado in a blink. "You call them?" he demanded, eyes squinting down. If the answer was no, I was afraid Stanton would deck hint.

"Of course," Howard said. "Told them traffic."

Stanton lightened as suddenly as he'd darkened. Clouds scudding on a windy day. "I love New York," he said, back to aw-shucks-rmjust-a-poor-country-governor. "Easiest place in the world to be late." "But we better roll."

Stanton ducked into the car. Was that it? Weren't they forgetting something? Howard cracked his window, "Can you meet us in our suite up at the Regency, 'bout eleven tonight?"

"Eleven?"

Stanton rolled down his window. "Whatsa matter, Henry," he asked, slyly, conspiratorially, "--you got some action going?"

"No," I said. Boy, did I feel slow. Was he looking for something clever, something sexual? He kept coming at me from places I didn't expect.

"See you, then," Ferguson said as the car rolled away.

Eleven o'clock? Well, it was late. It implied that we were skipping ahead, past the usual formalities. It assumed an intimacy that did not exist, in my mind, yet--but it was flattering, too. It also assumed I was a professional and would understand the rhythms of a campaign, even a larval one. Politicians work--they do their public work, that is--when civilians don't: mealtimes, evenings, weekends. The rest of the time, down time, is spent indoors, in hotel suites, worrying the phones, dialing for dollars, fighting over the next moves, living outside time; there are no weekdays or weekends; there is sleep but not much rest. Sometimes, and always at the oddest hours, you may break free: an afternoon movie, a midnight dinner. And there are those other, fleeting moments when your mind drifts from him, from the podium, and you fix on the father and son tossing a ball out past the back of the crowd, out in the park, and you suddenly realize, Hey, it's Saturday; or you glance out a hotel window and spot an elderly couple walking hand in hand, still alive in each other's mind (as opposed to merely sharing space, waiting it out). The campaign--with all its talk of destiny, crisis and mission--falls away and you remember: Other people just have lives. Their normality can seem a reproach. It hurts your eyes, like walking out of a matinee into bright sunlight. Then it passes. He screws up a line, it's Q&A time, it's time to move.

The suite at the Regency brought all that back. It was generic; it existed outside time. I was, at once, vaguely depressed and entirely comfortable. There was a handful of pols in shirtsleeves, working the phones, hammering laptops, nibbling off platters of fruit and cheese, chugging Diet Cokes. No smoke, no booze anymore. But a haze of ill health all the same; sycophancy frays the nerves, clogs the arteries. I didn't know most of them. There were a couple of bodyguard, trooper types. There were a couple of Nandi Wipes with wispy mustaches--statehouse sorts about to be paved over.

And there was Arlen Sporken, a Washington media consultant I knew only by reputation, which was mixed. He was hot right then, as hot as he would ever be, having just won a special election down in the Carolinas with a pro-choice ad that sold the Crackers on the notion that the Founding Fathers fought and died for the right to a d&c. Sporken had a great, fresh effusion of golden farmboy hair, after which it was all downhill, his body dissolving into a shocking wallow of fat. Pols tend toward fat, except for the joggers and jigglers, who burn down like fuses in a campaign. Sporken had a kind face, a pleasant drawl. He was from Mississippi and reeked of the un-ironic liberal fervor common to Southern Baptists who'd had conversion experiences during the civil rights years. He was a booster, an enthusiast--and another toucher, a flagrant one. "Henry Burton, as I live and breathe!" he announced, yanking my hand, then crushing tile in a kill body hug that culminated in actual backslapping and rib-chucking. "So you're on board."

"Well, I--"

"He thinks you're great. Great! Just great." This was more than your standard white-boy overcompensation in overdrive. "We're gonna win this thing," he was saying now. "Don't you think?"

Since this couldn't possibly be the beginning of a serious conversation about the campaign, I said something harmless like "Well, who else is in?"

"Henry, you really have been away. Harris, definitely. Martin, maybe. Luther Charles--well, you know Brother Luther." I did know Luther, mostly as a distant childhood memory; I hadn't seen him in years. But Sporken couldn't possibly have known that: he was assuming that since Luther was a brother, I'd have tribal vibes about his political intentions. So I sent him a quasi-disdainful look that said, We don't share vibes on the first date with persons outside the pigment. Arlen--a good liberal--retreated, respecting my racial space. "Uh, the big question is Ozio, of course," he concluded. "You think he's got the cojones to run?" A mortal dork, this guy. I considered the door. But I wanted to see Stanton again, I guess. "Ozio . . . Don't know him personally," I said. It was one of those conversations you have--usually with civilians--where life imitates the McLaughlin Group, where you say the safe, expected things. Political chat. But I strayed a little then, got too close to something real. "If Ozio did go, and put it all together," I asked. "Would you take the two spot?"

"Fuck a duck," said a familiar voice just behind me. "I'll take what I can get."

Stanton had cracked open the door to the bedroom behind me; he was buttoning his shirt over a hairless, pink chest; he was the color of a medium-rare steak just off the grill, steaming a little. I had heard about this. He opened the door wider. "You remember Ms. Baum," he said. The librarian. I hope I didn't gasp. She was . . . arranging herself. She seemed a bit dazed. She whacked her shoulder on the bedroom door, trying to squeeze past him. "Ow," she yipped. He leaned into her, put his arm on her. "You all right, darlin'?" She stiffened, desperately attempting to maintain the appearance of propriety. He was--well, he was entirely unembarrassed, as if he'd just sneezed, or scratched himself, or yawned, or done any of those semiprivate physical things normal people are willing to do in front of strangers.

"Well, Governor," she said, "it was good to have . . . this . . ."

He saved her, or tried to. "Henry," he said, turning to me. "Don't you think Ms. Baum runs just a great program?"

I said something.

"Thanks so much," she said, moving toward the door. "For . . ." "You're going to give my best to Iry Gelber, right?"

"Of course, we'll--"

"Take this up with your board. Tell Iry I'll even extend him the privilege of whupping my butt on the golf course." He had moved toward the door, following her. He put his hand on her shoulder, stopping her. He whispered something in her ear. She inhaled, then darted out the door.

"'Bye now," he said, closing the door, chuckling a little. He moved over toward the bar. There were piles of sandwiches, fruit and cheese. He prowled the food; he worried over it. He reached for a sandwich, restrained himself; chose an apple--a perfect red Delicious, like the poisoned one in Snow White, and made it disappear. "Ms. Baum is on the regional board of the teachers union," he explained, still chewing.

"I was wondering why you chose that particular library," I said, "in Harlem--"

Arlen Sporken was immediately in my face. "The governor always visits adult literacy programs, wherever he goes."

Stanton didn't seem too eager to acknowledge the politics of it, either. That part was obvious. It wasn't something you had to talk about. He made it clear, through the slightest of winces, a raised hand, a turn away--something--that this was an invasion of his innocence, a squall line threatening his uncloudy day.

"Well, it was a pretty amazing experience," I tried. What an idiot. And nobody said anything; nobody helped me out.

Stanton peered at me in a kindly way, as if he hoped that I'd know where to take the conversation from there. But I was stuck, clueless, and beginning to sweat. And then, for the first of what would be many, many times, she saved me.

The phone. "The missus," a trooper said.

He snagged a sandwich on the way. The receiver seemed tiny in his hand. I noticed his long, graceful fingers. He caressed the phone; it was clear he knew how to work it. "Hi, darlin'," he said. And then she leveled him--the sharp, distant bark was audible where I stood. His eyes narrowed, his brow fiirrowed. "Oh, listen, honey, I know, I know . . . I'm sorry . . . We got stuck here. But great news. Real progress with the teachers--" His eyes narrowed again. "Tonight? Are you sure? . . . I'm sorry . . . I had no idea--" Then, to one of the statehouse guys: "Charlie, did you know we were supposed to meet the guy from the Portsmouth Democratic Committee tonight?" Charlie shrugged; smiled. He was a thin, taut little man, a jockey. "Goddammit, Charlie--" He shrugged, smiled at Charlie. Then back on the phone, "Tell bins I'll come by first thing tomorrow . . . No, no, Susan . . . Please . . . C'mon ... No, I want to, I want to . . . We'll get right up there. We'll leave now If you'd just quit poppin' my eardrum, we'd . . . Okay, I'm . . . No, please don't go . . . Stay there. Stay right there . . . Susan?"

He hung up. Shrugged. "We better go," he said. "Where's the plane?"

"Teterboro," one of the troopers said.

"Shit. All the way out there? C'mon. C'mon. We gotta get out of here." There was all sorts of movement now. Papers gathered up. The jockey was in the bedroom, then out, with a suitcase. Stanton snagged another apple. He put his arm around Sporken, "You're doin' what we talked about?"

"Putting it together," he said. "But you know--Washington. They ain't coming along until you show what you can do--"

"Then they'll be pantin' after us like pigs in heat. But let 'em know we know that."

"I hear you," Sporken said. "And, Governor, I think you're doin' just great. They're not gonna know what hit 'ens."

"See you in DC," Stanton said. "You comin', Henry?"

Coming?

"Look," he said, "We'll talk on the plane. Wait a minute." He dashed into the bathroom. He came out with a bunch of toiletries provided by the hotel. Shampoo. Toothbrush. Comb. "What else you need?" he said.

"I've got classes tomorrow," I said.

"Call in sick--it's summer school," he said. "The kids won't mind." The jockey was standing next to him now, with the garment bag. "Oh, Henry," he said. "This is my uncle Charlie. You coming?"

He was asleep as soon as we got on the plane. It was a noisy little prop job; any conversation would have been strained, difficult. I tried with Uncle Charlie: "You're the Medal of Honor winner?"

"He say that?"

I nodded.

"Whatever he says," Charlie laughed. "He's the master." "Are you related to his mom or dad?"

"His dad died."

I knew that. "Did you know him well?"

"Nobody knew him well enough."

It was very late. The plane tracked low over the northeast corridor, between a cottony layer of clouds and an electric map, traces of light, towns and strip malls, country roads. It was like a toy, a model railroad; not quite real. This was all very strange, to say the least. I closed my eyes. I must have slept.

She was standing there, alone in the dark, on the tarmac at Manchester. It was a soft, heavy night, too cloudy for a moon, or perhaps too late. The terminal lights were dim, opalescent in the mist; there was a slight neon buzzing. A minivan stood just beyond the chain-link fence, engine idling, headlights rehearsing a smoky vaudeville of moths and mosquitoes. There was nothing else. We staggered down the stairs; him last.

"Susan Stanton," she said, shaking my hand.

"Henry Burton," I said.

"I know, I met you twenty-five years ago. At your grandfather's, in Oak Bluffs. You were running around in wet underpants. Just out of the sprinkler, I think. Very cute." She rattled this off crisply, an ironic commentary on Susan Stantonhood. I was charmed. Then, without the irony: "Your grandfather was a great man."

Only if you didn't know him, but I just said, "Thank you."

"Jack Stanton could also be a great man," she said, without turning to her husband, "if he weren't such a faithless, thoughtless, disorganized, undisciplined shit."

The governor was off to my side, back a little. I didn't want to look too hard, so I couldn't see the expression on his face. It was, undoubtedly, the furrowed brow, pouty-mouthed, elementary-school-penitent look. He reached out an arm to her, which she swatted away with a file folder.

"First impressions, asshole," she said. "These people don't know you. They don't even know you by reputation. They have United States senators courting them. They are waiting to be swept off their feet by Orlando Ozio, who is the governor of a real state."

"They may be waiting a while for--"

"They don't know that," she snapped. "They don't know shit. The Democratic town leader of Portsmouth only knows that he was supposed to have an after-dinner drink with the governor of a state whose capital he learned in third grade and promptly forgot and never had cause to think about from that day to this, and you never showed. Oh, he was wowed by the missus. Never met a woman so interested in fly-fishing before! Jack, do you realize how incredibly, indescribably, skull-crushingly boring fly-fishing is? Do you realize I've now committed to doing this--this thing with him? I will fly-fish, with him, because of you. You asshole. You cannot do this to me. You can't. We've only been at this a month, and already you're flicking up in your old fucked-up way. The only shot--the only shot--we have here is perfection. You cannot blow off party leaders. I am not going to let you embarrass--"

I was aware then of a subtle softening of the air. It was eerie, vaguely narcotic. He was . . . whistling. The song was--it was on the tip of my tongue, from before my time--syrupy, mainstream, late-fifties pop.

"Jack," she said sharply, then less so: "Jack--you asshole." And now he was singing:

"Primrose lane Life's a holiday on Primrose lane

When I'm walking down that

Primrose lane W-i-i-i-th you."

He had a slight, reedy tenor voice with a touch of sandpaper to it; not quite professional quality, but there was a musical intelligence behind it--a humility. He knew not to reach for too much, he toyed with his limitations. It was lovely and utterly insidious. It made her anger seem--transparent, unsubtle, the stunt it was. He was saying: I know your game, too.

Susan turned and began walking toward the minivan. He came up behind her, put his arms around her, snuggling her neck, cupping her breasts. They stood there silently for a moment, swaying slightly to the song he was no longer singing.

"So Henry and I were at this great, great reading program in Harlem today," he was saying as we drove along, crowded together in the minivan--Stanton and the driver up front, me, Susan, Uncle Charlie in the middle, the trooper and a couple of boxes of groceries, mostly munchies it appeared, in the back. "You should have seen those people."

"Was it one of yours or one of mine?" Susan asked him.

"Well, let me think," he said. "The librarian was--well, she was kind of inspirational. It was--"

"Henry," she cut him off. "He'll never tell the truth. You settle it. Here's the deal: Stanton and I have this argument about social programs. He's a sucker for inspirational leaders. He figures you can parse genius, analyze it, break it down and teach others how to do it. My feeling is: Gimme a break. Only God can snake a tree. You can't teach inspiration. What you do is come up with a curriculum. Something simple, direct. Something you don't need Mother Teresa to make happen--and that's what you replicate."

"But you can't sell anything if the teacher is a dud," he said. "You've gotta figure out a way to make great teachers. If you can really liberate them, reward them for creativity, they'll make their own programs. Henry, you ever see a curriculum inspire wonder? This is an argument I always win."

"Henry," she interrupted, "tell us about the librarian. Kind ofinspirational, the governor said?"

"Well, she was . . ." They were, I knew, listening very closely now It was showtime. "She was a pretty typical library bureaucrat." "Hah!" Susan Stanton snorted.

"But it didn't matter--she didn't have to be very good--because they wanted it so bad," I continued. Having allowed her the battle, I wasn't about to take sides in the war. "See, your argument is moot when the hunger is there. If everyone wanted to read, or whatever, as much as those folks did today, social policy would be a walk in the park. But you both know that's not where the problem is. It's creating the hunger for nutritious things when all they know is junk food." "And that's where inspiration comes in," Stanton said.

"Watch out," she said. "He's going to do his Lee Strasberg number on you now."

"Tell me I'm wrong," he said. "They should teach teachers, psychologists, social workers--all the people who do community stuff--like they teach actors, make them aware of their bodies, how to project, how to emote."

"We already have a nation of bad actors," she said.

Okay. It was a set piece, and kind of goofy at that. But it was about policy, not politics--not tactics, not gossip. They cared about it. They went on--not like principals--but like staffers, or perhaps academics. (Susan did teach law at the state university, when she wasn't helping her husband run the state.) They could cite case studies. He had a good one: a professor at the University of Tennessee or someplace had tried the Stella Adler method on half the fourth-grade teachers in Kingsport or somewhere and left the other half as a control group--and found significant improvement in reading scores among the students in the emoted-upon sample. Very goofy, and winning.

And I'd made it through. It was clear that . . . something had just transpired. And I was now part of it, a co-conspirator. I wasn't sure yet that these were people to be trusted. But they were up to something fascinating; their canvas was larger than the tiny brushwork I'd learned in the House. They had a sense of inevitability about them, a sense of entitlement. They didn't flaunt it--it was almost casual; indeed, they were less vain than most politicians. They didn't require any of the usual empty ceremonies of deference and pomposity; they didn't need the reassurance. Their calm, absolutely certain sense of destiny represented a level of audacity well beyond the imaginings of the bulked-up student-body presidents cluttering the Congress. Their ambition was for something beyond public office. It was too breathtaking to be discussed openly; the scope of the project was simply assumed. It was colossal. I found it nervous-making, over the top--and exhilarating. I had grown up in a politics of logic, compromise, and detail. I was ready for a ride.

And so we arrived at a condominium complex on the outskirts of Manchester, one of those nondescript pre-postmodern erections, the residential equivalent of a convenience store. It was now about 4:00 A. M. There were predawn stirrings, early workers starting their cars. "This is it?" Stanton asked, clearly displeased. "Tell me again, why not a hotel?"

"Money, convenience," said Mitch, the driver. "You can keep clothes here. We can store stuff. We have some privacy."

"I don't give a shit about privacy," Stanton said. "You can't get known in private. I'm here to get known."

He was up the stairs, inside, rousting about, a big man in a small, grim place. There was a Xerox machine in the living room. There were stacks of leaflets, bumper stickers, stick-ons. "This looks like the end of a campaign more than the beginning," he said.

Susan took my arm, nudged me toward the kitchen. Uncle Charlie brushed past with the bags. The governor was circling the TV now He clicked it on and got snow "What th--" He switched channels. More snow. Then a local station, a rerun of Car 54, Where Are You? Then more snow. "Mitch! Goddamrnit, Mitch! No cable? You gotta be kidding, man. You can't run for president of the United fucking States without CNN! Mitch, what was in your head? I'm outta here--This is the worst, two-bit, candy-assed goddamn . . . Hey?' Mrs. Stanton had in one swift, fluid motion reached into her bag, pulled out a set of keys and whipped them--hard--at her husband's head. "Darling," she said, "it's four in the morning. This is not how you want to be introduced to the neighbors."

His reaction was curious. He wasn't angry. "Yeah, well, we're outta here tomorrow," he said, rubbing his cheek. "This place smells like we lost."

I felt faint, woolly-edged, buzzy. It was all just--it was just nuts. But I was there, deep into this thing already, totally sucked in. And she was moving me, pushing me gently, both hands on my back, through the swinging door, into the kitchen. "Tea?" she asked.

The kitchen was white, fluorescent. She pulled two mugs. They were white too. Then, abruptly: "You up for this?"

"For what?"

"Take care of him."

There was no way I could answer that question. But, finally: a job description.

"We're going to win, y'know"

I could have asked, How do you know? It would have been an interesting thing to hear. I wonder about it now, what she would have said. But I was already, by mutual assumption, sort of on staff, and so I merely grunted, "Uh-huh."

She opened a cupboard. It was spiritually bare; instant coffee, a box of White Rose teabags, Fig Newtons. No one lived there. "You take anything?" she asked. "Honey?"

She opened the fridge. It was bottom-heavy. An almost empty top few shelves: a jar of honey, a pint of milk. Down below, maybe fifty Cokes and Diet Cokes, a few stray sixpacks of V-8, ginger ale. The depressing sterility of it made Stanton's pique seem almost visionary. This was a place to work, not sleep.

Susan Stanton didn't seem to notice. She snagged the honey, poured the tea and sat down across from me. She kicked off her shoes, low-heeled pumps. And then, once again, abruptly: "So why did you quit Larkin?"

There was no way to fudge this, not with her. But there were layers of reasons. "It wasn't him," I said.

"He's good--good instincts, usually right, I think," she said. "But too cool, maybe. Does he ever blink? I mean, literally?" She was laughing. It was a nice deep chuckle. "I've never seen him blink. He's got that steady gaze."

"Like a rock."

"Like a lizard," she whooped.

"Yeah," I agreed. "After a while it was all the same. He taught me a lot, but he never surprised me. Not much inspiration there. And it got old, roping the strays."

"Without hope of winning."

"No, it was worse. We always won. It was winning and then not winning. We'd win--and, you know, it was always a hundred tiny deals, things we'd give, and I was always looking for that one vote, the guy who wasn't one of the professional heroes--you know, the smug brothers, the ones who get elected, always from elite districts, because they're 'courageous'--but I was always hoping that one of the sheep would step up and do it for history. Without asking for a lulu--" "Lulu?"

"New York for artificial sweetener," I said. "And sometimes you'd get one or two. Someone would wake up feeling honorable. Or guilty. Most of the time, there was no percentage in it for them. Why ask for trouble? It was all pretty predictable in any case. We'd win. Then we'd be gutted in the Senate; we'd settle for their version. You know, I got to see Donny O'Brien with his palms raised more times than I'd ever need to. I could wad his palms by the time it was over. We'd walk through the rotunda to his office, past all the tourists lit up with history--and I'd always be thinking about the chasm between politics and history. But the Lark would just be out there, making himself available to the civilians, into his cybernetic 'Good to see you' maneuvers." Susan laughed. "Yeah, I've seen him do that," she said. "It's like Stanton's mom, working the slot machines in Vegas. Automatic. Once you see something like that, it's tough to get past it. You know what? First time I saw Larkin doing that, governors' conference or something, I had this . . . wicked feeling"--she was giggling now--"that he made a conscious decision to emphasize the 'you' rather than the 'see' because he wanted to seem more . . . what? Natural?" She slapped herself on the forehead. "God. Poor guy."

"Not so poor," I said. "He is the majority leader."

"But he wants more, and he'll never understand why he won't get there," she said. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'd guess Donny O'Brien is the exact opposite--surprised he got as far as he did, black Irish to the Senate, and then leader? Jeez. Had to be just thrilled to be there, right?"

"Sweet man," I agreed. "And clever. We'd go the office and he'd offer the Lark a Harp. Lark would ask for mineral water. He wouldn't want to say Perrier in front of Donny. And, of course, Donny would use that. The tip-off was, we must have gone there a dozen times over the course of a few years, and Donny always offered the Harp--just to start him off on the defensive."

"And your guy never took the beer, to see if he'd get a better deal?" Susan asked.

"Amazing," I said. "I always wondered about that. He didn't even have to go for a beer."

"Right." She was giddy. "He coulda really rocked Donny's world--asked for a Diet Coke, a 7UP . . . a club sandwich." It was late, but I hadn't expected the irreverence, the humor, the love of the game. She was breathtaking. "So what, then? How did Donny let him down?" "He'd go up with the palms. 'Lark, this is what we've got. This is what we can do. I owe you one, buddy. What can I say?' " I stopped. I hadn't quite caught the fullness of Donny's Irish grease--he cast a spell, as all the good ones do. "In the end, it didn't mean anything anyway. We'd take it back to our side, renegotiate the lulus, pass the damn thing. And then, as we knew from the start, the White House would veto. And we'd celebrate our great moral victory: we forced a veto."

"That was something," she said.

"Not enough. It was even worse on the stuff that had to pass--the budget."

"So you dropped out," she said. "You gonna drop out on us?" Very smooth. She was closing the deal.

Okay: "Have I dropped in yet?"

"Say you have."

"Well, I was always curious about how it'd be," I began. "How the whole process--yeah, I guess the country, too--would work with someone who actually cared about . . . Well, y'know, I wonder: It couldn't always have been the way it is now, the feeling of--of blab. Swamp gas. Stagnation. There had to be times when it was better. The other guys had it with Reagan, I guess. But, to me, he was just floating with the flow. He didn't try for anything hard. . . ."

"And a good thing, too," she said.

"Yeah, I guess . . . The thing is, I'd kind of like to know how it feels when you're fighting over . . . y'know--historic stuff. I'm not like you. I didn't have Kennedy. I got him from books, from TV. But I can't get enough of him, y'know? Can't stop looking at pictures of him, listening to him speak. I've never heard a president use words like 'destiny' or 'sacrifice' and it wasn't bullshit. So: I want to be part of something, a moment, like that. When it's real, when it's history. I . . ." I had let things slip a little bit. That wasn't good. I was interviewing for a job where my primary responsibility would be to not let things slip. "Goddamn," I said. "My, my, my," I said--just like my father, and just like his father, the Reverend Harvey Burton, the man Susan Stanton had praised. Embarrassing, to make this into Black History Month; unprofessional. But I saw: she was with me. It was okay. Still, I had to button it up. "I feel like--a real jerk--even saying that sort of thing," I said. "Maybe we're not living in a time when those kinds of dreams are possible, or even appropriate. But it's late and you asked, and there it is."

"No, you're right," she said. "It's good. History's what we're about, too. What else is there?" Then, "Sleepy?"

She led me into the living room. There was a pillow and a blanket folded on the couch: "Your quarters," she said, patting me on the back, squeezing my arm, drifting off toward the bedroom. I tossed the blanket, lay back on the pillow. It was light now; there were birds, and a piney breeze through the screens. Summer camp. Uncle Charlie came padding through, wiry taut in a sleeveless T-shirt and boxers. And tattoos: "Momma" with a heart on one arm, on the other a sly devil with a pencil-thin mustache--like his--and the words "Made Me Do It."

"Hey," he said. "Coffee?"

Chapter II

Henri, you think its possible for a black girl to look like Winona?" Richard Jemmons asked.

"Get lost."

"Oh yeah, I forgot. You don't like black girls much."

"Fuck you."

"But then again, there's that Mexican girl in scheduling, Maria Whatsis--she's got the hair and the mouth. So if a Mexican can look like Winona, then maybe . . ."

"Richard, you are diseased." And he was. He was manic, obsessive, very strange-looking, thin as a whippet--his body and all his features were narrow, thin lips, thin nose, dark thinning hair, which made his thick, black-frame eyeglasses seem enormous; everything about him was sharp except his eyes, which were opaque. He never seemed to be looking straight at you, never quite took you in--and that quality, a vehement opacity, defined him. Every conversation was a monologue, more or less. He was an explosive talker, though not always comprehensible--all honks and bleats, mutters and half-swallowed imprecations. He was also, reputedly, the best political strategist in the party. We hadn't seen much evidence of that yet. He wasn't zoned in yet. But he was a trip. He had the eccentricity part of the program down pat. Having seen Heathers in a hotel room somewhere, he was on a Winona Ryder jag. He called every woman in the office Winona. Of all the people we'd taken on that fall--and they were legion (it is amazing how many people start showing up when one of these things gets rolling)--I liked Richard best. He had come down to Mammoth Falls in early October, and spent the weekend riding around with Stanton in the governor's Bronco, on the cell phone to Ohio, where he was in the midst of a hot special election for the Senate. Stanton didn't offer him a job, either. They just rode around, the governor listening to country music--and to Richard, working his campaign long-distance. They hit all the hot spots. Fat Willie's Barbecue. The Misty Hill lounge. Uncle Slim's. Aunt Bertha's Soul Shack. Then down to Grace Junction, to Momma's place. Momma, of course, loved Richard. He didn't even say hello; just scooped her up in his arms and said, "How did such a little, bitty woman have such a big ol' redneck sonofabitch of a boy?"

That night, after take-in chicken--Momma never cooked; she ordered--and after Richard stopped using the cell phone, he and the governor sat on the screen porch till three in the morning and held what Richard later called "the Mommathon." They talked family stuff. Family stuff was mostly Momma stuff with the governor, of course. Richard, on the other hand, had more family than he could keep track of--seven brothers and sisters, innumerable cousins, uncles, and aunts; he worshiped them all. His daddy, who was gone now, was a combination justice of the peace, postmaster, store clerk. "Daddy dint say much," Richard would say, "but he said it all." His momma--well, she had been touched by God. She was blind. She was beautiful. She had lost one leg from diabetes, and was in danger of losing another. "And a complete, drop-dead, hold-the-phone, ever-lovin' genius," Richard would say. He couldn't talk about Momma without misting over. He and the governor had several good cries during the Mommathon. At one point, Richard smashed a lawn table out of frustration over his mother's lot; the governor hugged him and sang "You Are My Sunshine," which, he--inevitably--pointed out, was written by another Southern governor and was probably "the most American goddamn song I can think of." They were locked for life after that.

The thing I loved about Richard was, he was overtly race-conscious. I took it as a piece of performance art, a running commentary on the mortal prissiness of most white people.

Most white people do this patronizing number: They never disagree with you, even when you are talking the worst sort of garbage. It is near impossible to have a decent, human conversation with them. They are all so busy trying not to say anything offensive--so busy trying to prove they aren't prejudiced--that they freeze up, get all constricted, formal. They never just talk. This may be more true in the political community, where everyone is hyperconscious of perceived offenses and consequences, than it is in real life. But it is hard to be black, and in politics, and not disdain these fools.

There are two subgroups, however, that are tolerable: There are those who are truly color-blind--like Jack and, to a lesser extent, Susan. They will argue with you, yell at you, treat you like a human. And then there are the occasional miracles like Richard Jemmons, who just lay it all out there.

"Lacoste, face it, you are a honky," he would say. He called me Henri Lacoste because I'd gone to Hotchkiss. I was a preppy, an elitist. "Y'all ain't but one-half black--and that's the best part of you. Enables you to intimidate the palefaces, 'specially lib-blabs, and work that voodoo sexual shit with white girls. Ins probably blacker'n you are. I got some slave in me, somewhere. I can feel it."

"Richard, you are the whitest person in America."

"Richard Nixon is the whitest person in America. Although, second thought, maybe not. He's got the rage, right? He's a poor boy, right? Someone's gotta be whiter than Nixon. . . . Ahhhh, whattabout Mondale? Walter Mondale is a fucking albino of the human spirit. Y'knowwhattamean? Can't get much whiter than Norwegian. Though French, Lacoste, is pretty damn close. Too damn close for comfort. Right? You listenin' to me? Right?"

Richard came and went in the early months. He'd pop in for a day or two, then disappear. This was the heavy Winona period and it almost got him into serious trouble. He was particularly obsessed with Jennifer Winona--Jennifer Rogers, one of the press muffins--who really did have the look. He was hitting on her nonstop, but she was very cool; she could handle him. Which made him all the more crazy--Winona, he imagined, would be able to handle him, too. The day the Ozio business began, he and I were sitting in the litde office. This was our first headquarters, a former Olds dealership just down from the state capitol--a big open space, plate-glass windows, with small offices, including my digs, in the back. Richard was in the ratty chair, jiggling, looking over into the big room, not paying much attention to me--I was talking Midwest fund-raising, looking for Ohio money or something--when he spotted Jennifer over at the copy machine. He launched himself in her direction, and I could see hint fluttering around her, jabbering, arms windmilling, a spastic Lothario. Everyone else saw it too, but pretended not to notice--everyone knew it was Richard, and Richard was nuts. But he was really on her, and I began to think that maybe I should distract him, pull him back. He was talking about his hotel room. "Got everything, y'know. Got movies. Got room service. Winona, it's like, like . . . paradise. Y'all come back there, we gonna walk the snake."

"The snake?" she snorted. "More like a worm, I'll bet. In fact, an enigma: an asshole can't have a penis."

"An enigma? It's a fucking python," he shouted. "You don't believe me? You don't believe me?" He was unzipping his pants. I was rushing over toward him, saying, "Hey, hey."

But it was too late. He had it out.

"Hmmm," Jennifer said, not flinching, looking right at it. "I've never seen one that . . . old before."

Richard turned fuchsia. He zipped up and dashed out of there. There were cheers, applause. ennifer curtsied. I took her arm, walked her back into my office and closed the door. "You okay?" I asked. She nodded.

"You've got his life in your hands now, you know," I said. "Don't worry," she said. "I just hope he's worth it."

"Don't we all," I said. "But you're okay?"

She leaned over, took my chin in her hand and kissed me on the cheek. "Very kind of you to ask," she said. Jesus.

At which point, of course, a knock on the door. "Henry, you got a visitor," said Eric, another of the muffins.

"Who?"

"You ain't gonna believe it."

"Cut the shit, Eric. Who--" But I had swung open the door and now I saw: Jimmy Ozio was sitting atop a desk in the middle of the Big Room, taking a very intent look around. He was a big guy, curly hair, handsome in a lucky kind of way. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt, gray tie. We shook hands. His was a cruncher.

"So, what brings you to Mammoth Falls?"

"Business," he said. "Thought I'd stop by to say hi. Nice little operation you got here. Fifteen people?"

"Twenty-three," I said. "Plus eight volunteers. We got some more in New Hampshire."

"The volunteers--kids or old ladies?"

Smart. "Both," I said. (Mostly old ladies, locals with nothing better to do; the kids hadn't found our campaign sufficiently inspiring to drop out of college yet.)

"The boss around?"

"I'll check," I said. I wasn't going to give him shit. "Back in a minute."

I called the governor over at the statehouse. "How important?" Annie Marie asked.

"Code yellow."

"I'll find him, hold on. He ain't doing anything that important. Out in the Bronc somewhere. Probably working the cash machine. . . ." It took a few minutes. Then the familiar crackle, and the governor: "Whut?"

I knew that whut. I was interrupting something. "Sorry, Governor, but Jimmy Ozio just walked in the office. He'd like to see you." "No shit. Hmmm. What's up, you think?"

"Dunno. Scouting expedition, maybe. If Orlando had anything serious, he'd call, right? He's known for that. So how you want to handle this? Office? Mansion?"

"Dinner, no question. We'll show him around town. Mansion at six. I want you there, too. Tell him, casual. Also, you hear anything from Jerry Rosen lately?"

Rosen was the political writer at Manhattan magazine. He was a friendly--and an important--one. If he liked you, and wrote it, it meant New York money . . . usually. But not this year. He liked the governor, and had written it. But the New York money had stayed in New York pockets, because of Ozio. The Wall Street Dems weren't going anywhere until Double 0 made his move.

"I may have a message in the stack," I said.

"You might want to return that call," Stanton said. Rosen was known to be close to Ozio. "Don't tell him Jimmy's down here, but see what he knows."

I made the dinner arrangements with Jimmy, then called Jerry Rosen.

Jerry said he didn't know shit. But he was wrong. "Basic rule with Double 0: All rumors are false," he said. "There is no inside information. Even Jimmy doesn't know what his old man's up to. I talked to Orlando the other day--"

"And?"

"He was off the wall about Stanton. He said, What's he done? That state's last in everything. I said, He knows education. Orlando goes berserk: 'He doesn't know shit about education and he's trying to race-bait on welfare.' "

"He said this on the record?"

"Who ever knows with him? He's on, he's off, he's on and off three times in the same thought," Jerry said. "I'm gonna use it. He'll probably call and scream and call me a superficial fuck, but he'll be happy I used it."

"Why?"

"Keeps him in the game."

"So he's running?"

"Who knows? You figure that he can't go on like this, dicking around--he makes a fool of himself, lives up to his worst stereotype, Oscillating Ozio. But he just can't help himself. His fantasy is a race where he doesn't run and nobody else wins. For what it's worth, I think he's kind of edging toward doing it this time."

"Why?" I asked. "Anything solid?"

Rosen snorted. "Just a feeling. Pride. He's a proud guy. It would be so embarrassing for him to take another run up to it and then back away--start all those Mafia rumors again, give the late-night guys a year's worth of gags. He doesn't like being laughed at . . . which is why he always chickens out in the end. But this time, he's flicked either way: They laugh at him if he backs down. And if he rum--well, he's got to study up on things like what's a 4-H Club and how does it relate to the Future Farmers of America. Because if he gets it wrong, he wants to shoot himself. He drives himself nuts, explodes, takes it out on the press. Anyway, you think Stanton would want to respond to what Ozio said about him, the stuff I'm gonna quote? That's what I was calling you about." "I'll see," I said. Right. In a million years, he wants to get into a pissing match with Orlando Ozio.

"Look, even if Orlando's in, I think you beat him," Jerry said, and actually sounded like he meant it. "I was up with Stanton in Derry last week, a high school--awesome."

"You ever see Orlando do a high school?" I asked.

"Oh sure, he's terrific. But that's not his problem," Rosen said. "We are. He can scream at me. I'm from Brooklyn. I know from screaming. Wait till Orlando has to deal with Americans-of-the-press. Wait till the guy from the Concord Monitor gets his first six A. M. screaming phone call, 'You're an assassin, a flicking assassin!' I would say he blows his stack in the first seventy-two hours. His polls peak the first day of the campaign. He begins to slide. He can't handle adversity. It could be very ugly"

"We'll see," I said.

"Or we won't see."

I was at the Mansion about ten minutes early, just in case the governor needed anything. Susan called down from the top of the stairs: "Henry? You're going to want to see the Human Torch. He's in the study" Richard Jemmons was curled up on the couch, hands pressed between his legs, as if they'd been sucked into his thighs, watching The Honeymooners on the big screen. I clicked it off and said, "To the moon, Alice."

"On."

"No."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck me? You stupid redneck sonofabitch. What goes on in that fucked-up head of yours? You never heard of Anita Hill? Man, you are so lucky she's cool."

"I wouldna done it if she wasn't cool," he sneered.

"Richard, you will not do that again." It was Susan, in the doorway. "You will not even wink at a muffin. You will not call any person who works for us Winona, even if her name is Winona. If you do, the best you can hope for is that we'll can your butt. A more likely scenario is that I'll conic after your scrawny little ding-a-ling with a pair of garden shears."

The governor came in. He didn't say anything; he just let Susan handle it. He was wearing a short-sleeved knit shirt--colors of the nineties, purple and teal--jeans and cowboy boots. Both Stantons, in fact, were wearing jeans. The effect was not overwhelming, in either case. In fact, their studied informality seemed particularly lame when Jimmy Ozio came in--still in his black suit, white shirt, gray tie. "Hey," Jack Stanton said. It was Southern for hi, but with some yelp mixed in, I thought, as Ozio crunched his hand. A campaigning pol's hands are, inevitably, pretty tender from overwork. Jimmy nodded around, once again casing the joint. He saw Richard on the couch. "You're Dick Jemmons?" He said.

"Richard," Richard said, pulling a hand out from between his legs, but still stuck in fetal on the couch. "Yeah."

"Nice work in Jersey last year," Jimmy said. "Orlando thinks you're almost as smart as he is."

Very nice: a light touch, making fun of the old man. Jimmy was a pro. This wasn't going to be easy.

"So, you like barbecue?" the governor asked.

"Hamburgers and hot dogs?" Jimmy's game was elegant: You play Southern, I'll play Northern. We'll see who cuts the shit first. "We're gonna have to take you out to a real, old-fashioned Southern pit barbecue," the governor said. "What you say, Richard? Wet or dry?"

"The boy takes off that tie, we can take him to Fat Willie's," Richard said. "Ozio, you ever eat pig with your hands?"

"Raw or cooked?"

it magnificent. He and Susan had Jimmy in the Bronco; I trailed with Richard in my old Honda. "So y'all livin' down here?" he asked. I wasn't living much of anywhere. I'd spent the first few months with the governor, often just the two of us, traveling the country. It was an apprenticeship. I learned how he worked, and thought. We had entered the race officially in September, but it didn't change the routine much. We did the money thing, mostly--but he didn't get all googly around rich people, the way most pols do; nor did he carp about them behind their backs. Money had no magic for him; the folks did. He was lovely with the people, dispensing his meaningful handshakes, listening to their stories; he had a knack--no, it was more than a knack; it was something deeper, more profound and respectful--for making it clear that he had listened to them and understood, and cared. He never left a room--it was small rooms, mostly, those first few months--without knowing everyone's name, and he would remember them. Even in New Hampshire, a state that seemed to have a magnetic attraction for chilly, pale, pinched skeptics. Not his crowd, you'd figure. But we moved from living room to living room, coffee to coffee. The governor tilled and mulched slowly, carefully, lovingly; he allowed them their skepticism, encouraged it, joked about it: "I don't want y'all to make up your minds too soon, now," he'd say. "Take a look at the field, think about it. You still have a hundred and twenty-three days"--or whatever it was (he always knew)--"before you determine the fate of the republic."

He enjoyed this, and them. And more: He loved what it was about. He loved governance--especially executive governance. (Legislators were a different, somewhat less interesting species.) In two months I'd learned more from him about the public sector--the people's business--than I had in five years with Larkin. We always hit the statehouse, wherever we went--and he never had to ask for directions. He always knew where the governor's office was--sometimes other officials as well. He was ecumenical. He liked them all. It didn't matter if they were Democrats or Republicans. He could tell you what every last governor had done, what their strengths and weaknesses were. The amount of information was staggering--but even more impressive was the energy, and interest, he put into it. A bureaucrat somewhere--in Lansing, in Austin--might tell him a new way to work

Clean Air money, and he'd put the big ears on, and he'd stay and stay, we'd fall hours behind, it didn't matter. He wouldn't leave there until he'd drained the guy.

It would pay off, too. He was a human clearinghouse; he cross-pollinated. One time we were in Montgomery, wandering through the state capitol--a building that had deep, fearful resonances for me, the cradle of the Confederacy, George Wallace's joint--and he said, "Henry, you're freaked, I can feel it. I'm gonna make you feel all shiny and good."

He dragged me down a hallway, to the attorney general's office. "Now, Jim Bob Simmons, he's the boss here--and not a bad fella," he explained, "but I'm gonna show you the real brains of the operation. Hey, Betty," he said to the receptionist, a drab white woman with great butterfly eyeglasses, for whom the blush of youth had faded much too soon. "Your momma back on her feet again?"

"You bet, Governor," she said, matter-of-fact, as if governors were always stopping by to ask about her mother. "But the chemotherapy was a bitch."

Stanton stopped, squatted down next to the woman, took her hand. "But she's clear now?"

"So they say."

"Ain't that the truth," he said, snagging a couple of Fig Newtons from her half-opened top drawer. "You never know. She a churchgoin' woman?"

"Every Sunday."

"You go with her?"

Betty hesitated. Stanton took her hand. "Look, honey, you might think about that--goin' with her. Specially now You can ask your husband to take the kids-- Ray, right?"

She nodded, and now began to tear up. "He's got so much, Governor--long-haulin'. He comes in Saturday night, he's just dead." "Yeah, I guess," Stanton said, pulling her closer and giving a gentle peck on the side of her forehead. "But you think about it. Mean a lot to your momma. Maybe you take the kids, put them in Sunday school, or with a friend, or somethin'. . . . So where's my man? He's gotta be here, right? He ain't off dove-huntin' or anything?"

"I just buzzed him," Betty said, and a tall, thin black man came through the door. Stanton stood up, brightened, and threw his arms around him.

"You coulda called," the black man said.

"Coulda, shoulda, woulda--just passin' through, Billy," he said. "This is Henry Burton, my new drone. Henry, this is William J. Johnson, deputy attorney general of the state of Alabama, a great American but a semiretard when it came to Torts."

"Pleased to meet you," Johnson said, his enormous hand swallowing mine. "What the governor neglected to tell you was that my notes got him through Contracts the year he decided to manage a hippie runnin' for Senate down here, 'stead of hangin' out and being a student like a normal person."

"He wasn't a hippie," Stanton said. "Just antiwar."

"Last I heard, Jack, he was livin' on a farm in northern California, makin' goddamn furniture."

"You seen the stuff?" Stanton said. "It is awesome great. We're sleepin' under his headboard, at the Mansion."

"C'mon back, you fool," Johnson said, throwing an arm over Stan-ton's shoulder.

It was a small office, piled with reports and lawbooks, diplomas on the wall, pictures of Bill Johnson elegant in midair, driving the lane against Michigan in the NCAAs--and another picture ofJohnson, in an enormous Afro, with Jack Stanton, his face camouflaged by what appeared to be a costume mustache, sitting side by side on a couch, deep in what seemed a very serious conversation. It was a surprisingly intimate photograph for a politician's wall--usually, you don't want to risk much beyond your children's orthodontia and handshakes with people more famous than you--and it moved me. "Law school," Johnson explained, noticing my interest. "What were we arguing aboutjack? Sending the North Vietnamese guns or bandages?" "Naww, you were pined off at me for asking your sister out," Stanton said.

"Susan was pined off at you 'bout that," Johnson replied. "I thought Cyrilla'd teach you some manners, 'specially 'bout not eating off other folks' plates. You remember what we really were talking about?"

Stanton nodded. "What we always talked about: white folks. Dr. King had just died--"

"No, it was months later--it was Bobby," Johnson said. "We were in finals. You were about to go off to work for him. Remember, you were trying to get Professor Screechy--whatsisname . . ." "Markowitz."

"Yeah, Markowitz--to reschedule torts, or let you take it long-distance, so you could be out there on primary night?"

"Yeah, I remember," Stanton said softly.

"You figured you would've spotted Sirhan."

"And you were ready to pick up a gun, or somethin'."

"Right," Johnson said, turning to me. "This asshole talked me out of it. I was ready to walk out of law school. I mean, what was law? Who gave a shit about law with all our guys gettin' capped? But he said we had to stick with it, stick with the program. I had to think about my responsibility to the kids, the message I'd be sending if I walked. 'A lot of people would like to believe a black ballplayer can't make it through Harvard Law,' he said. 'You're givin' them aid and comfort if you don't.' Right, Jack? And look where it got me," he said, spreading his arms and nearly touching the two side walls, "--the lap of luxury, right?"

"You wouldn't trade it for a white-shoe partnership if your life depended on it," Stanton said.

"If my wife depended on it?" Johnson laughed. "Lucky she don't depend on my measly bucks--she's makin' a fortune"--he glanced over at me--"teaching elementary school." He reached into a small refrigerator and tossed the governor a Diet Dr Pepper. He nodded toward me, I gave him the high sign and he tossed me one. They talked wives. They talked shop.

"You gonna go for it, now Jim Bob's lookin' to move up?" Stanton asked.

"Can't--it's still Alabama," Johnson said. "Might ifJim Bob or the governor endorsed me. But they're too cute for that. Why risk a single, skinny-assed redneck vote?"

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," Stanton nodded, then got serious. "Now listen, Billy. I know you got a family to support, can't do it now--but I want you to think about coming on with me y'hear? I need you, man. I make it, you can start house-shopping in Arlington, okay?"

"Vice president's staff don't pay too good, I hear," Johnson said. "0 ye of little faith," Stanton said. "You didn't think I could pass Contracts either."

"Not without going to class."

"But I did, I seem to recall," Stanton said. "Now look, tell me 'bout my favorite program. If I'm gonna try it, you'd better have made it happen." He turned to me: "Dr. Johnson over here has been lifting driver licenses off of kids who are truant in three counties for the past year."

"Attendance up twenty percent," Johnson said. "Dropout rate down ten percent."

Stanton whistled. "Now aren't you glad I talked you out of pickin' up the gun?"

The point is: a week later we were up in New Hampshire, talking to a small group of state legislators in some bare, pathetic law office conference room in Concord--a woman from North Conway brings up youth problems, the French Canadian kids dropping out of high school--and Stanton says, "Look, you gotta call William Johnson, friend of mine, deputy attorney general down in Alabama. He's got this program." Afterward, Delia Schubert, a rep from the Seacoast--middle-aged, standard-issue enviro type comes up, aflutter and says, "I've met your boss twice and both times he taught me something. Is he always like that?"

Yes he was, and she was on board. We were picking up a sprinkling of locals like that, very retail. Stanton was gaining strength, on the merits, from people who knew better, who knew their best shot was to hang out, stay uncommitted, wait for Ozio--they could always come over to us if Orlando passed on the race or stumbled. But they just couldn't help themselves. He was so good they just couldn't wait. I was very proud to be working for him.

So we did the country. He never talked all that much about the ultimate prize--it was almost, at times, as if we were running for governor of America--largely because the big show hadn't really begun yet. Stanton figured (correctly, as it turned out) the campaign wouldn't begin until Ozio made up his mind or the New Year, whichever came first. There was no way of knowing what it would be like, the shape and intensity of the thing, or what would matter. He understood that. He'd watch the opponents, and potential opponents, very carefully. He wasn't impressed. Three senators--two active, one former--had announced at that point. The most plausible of them was Charlie Martin, a Vietnam war hero and another boomer. Stanton liked him but didn't take him very seriously: Charlie had just decided, spur of the moment, to run. He hadn't thought it through. "He's a resume searchin' for a reason," Stanton said. A couple of weeks after he declared, Martin called the governor and said, "Hey, Jack, man, is this a trip? Can you believe we're really doing it?" Stanton had said something expected, like Yeah, it's wild, running for president of the United States, but he was disdainful when he hung up. "A war hero and he doesn't have the discipline to do this thing straight on," he said. "No footprints, Henry. None of these boys are leaving any footprints."

Nor did he, in his way. He taught me everything, told me nothing. Gradually, I came to see how he devoured every aspect of public life--nuances, and hints of nuance, that only he knew existed. It was, I imagine, something like the way a hawk sees the ground--every insect, every blade of grass is distinct, yet kept in perspective. I came to know how he'd react to any new situation; I learned to read his moods, when to talk and when not. I became inured to personal details, his chronic heartburn, his allergies. I became his Maalox bearer. I saw him angry, and thrilled, and frustrated, and depressed. I learned what sort of information he needed immediately--we had little cards I'd put in front of him--and which I could hold back until we had a break. There was intense familiarity, but no intimacy. He never talked about anything personal, about Susan, about their son, Jackie, about his Bronco wanderings, about his childhood--never really talked about them, beyond the public storehouse of stories told and reported. He was incredibly undisciplined about time, and making decisions, and figuring out who should do what on staff, but there was a strict precision about self-revelation. He was always in control. Lately, as we began to build a staff, he'd been leaving me back at headquarters more often. The training was over. He trusted me now to see things the way he would, to get things ready for the show. I understood the motivation but still suffered staffer pangs: Where he was was where it was. I wanted to be there.

Mammoth Falls didn't help. It drifted along in black and white, and I--neither and both--had trouble with the vibes and assumptions as I wandered about. The vibes were quieter, more civil, but, in a way, clearer than those I was accustomed to up north. One night I had a burger at a fern bar in a mall on the white side of town. The cineplex there was the only place in the area you could see a foreign film, inevitably broad French or Italian comedies (it was Cinema Paradiso that night, I think--not bad), never anything heavy or dark or deep or significant. Anyway, the waitress gave me a look and asked, "Are you from around here?" Meaning: You mustn't be, because if you were, you wouldn't be here. Normally, that sort of thing wouldn't bother me. It is barely worth remembering. But I was alone, in a strange--very out of the way--place, a place where I got The Washington Post by fax each day (and the thin, unsatisfying national edition of the Times). I was constantly, acutely aware of my skin, and both ways: the way others saw it and the way it experienced the physical world. I was more conscious of everything. Humidity made me sluggish and mushy. Air conditioning hurt. So I pretty much kept to the campaign, and to myself. I ran every evening, three miles, down one side of the river and back the other. I lived in a sterile apartment very much like that first one we'd rented, and discarded, in Manchester. I read novels, early Doris Lessing (she was, I imagine, very sexy in Africa). I had muffin fantasies.

"Wonder what he's sayin' up there," Richard said, as we trailed the governor and young Ozio in the Bronco.

"Nothing Jimmy can take to the bank."

Richard laughed, "He's a peach. No question."

"You ever had one so good?" I asked.

"Dunno how good he is yet," Richard said. "What's more, he don't know how good he is yet."

"He's got a suspicion."

"She's got a suspicion."

I imagined the governor singing one of his favorites: " 'We cain't go on together, with suspicious mi-finds . . "

Fat Willie's was a trailer with a long plastic awning and picnic tables spread out around it. It reeked of smoke and carcinogens. Fat Willie was . . . as advertised: a big, sweaty black man--former all-state tackle for Mammoth Falls Central High--wrapped in a long white, sauce-daubed apron. He brightened immediately when he saw Stanton. "Hey, Gov! . . . Hey, Amalee, the Gov's here," he said to his wife, who was not insubstantial herself. Stanton, oblivious to the sauce, wrapped Willie in a full frontal, then wheeled to throw an arm over Amalee. He stood there between them, grinning his "aw-shucks, proud to be a country boy" grin; it was pure joy. There was an easy familiarity to this: it happened every time we came. Once, several months earlier, I'd sat--awestruck--as the governor spent an hour sitting at one of the back tables, consoling Willie over the death of his mother. "How's business, Will?" he said now, squeezing the big man. "You got your mojo workin' tonight?"

"Ain't no end to it, Gov," Willie turned his head. "Hey, honey, where's Loretta? Hey, Lo--Gov's here!"

Loretta was their daughter, the sort of girl who was destined for obesity--you could see it coming in her upper arms, her thighs--but, for the moment, deeply, adolescently luscious. She flashed Stanton a look, then tried to hide it. Susan gave her a hug, "Hi, honey, how's it goin'? School okay? We've missed you--but I guess your mom and dad keep you busy here, not much time for sitting."

"Yes'm," Loretta said dully.

The governor--a stone Pavlovian when it came to pork--negotiated the meal with Willie. "Now, I want you to fix all these folks up right, y'hear? And send me a double."

We moved out to a back table, away from the sharp halogens Willie used to illuminate the ordering window. The night was a touch chilly; Willie hadn't put up his winter plastic yet. But he pulled out a space heater and hooked it up next to Susan, creating a viral undulation, electric heat and November breezes. When the food canoe, the governor inhaled his, then looked up shocked--and not undelighted--that the rest of us were still working, which left the possibility that more was to be had. He kept his eye on Susan's plate, then--at the instant she crumpled her last paper napkin--swiped the leftovers. He snagged my Texas toast when he thought no one was looking (he was wrong; Jimmy was). I was, for once, disappointed in him. This wasn't good. Afterward, Jimmy lit a cigarette, a Parliament actually--a brand I thought no longer existed; Susan grimaced (Jimmy caught that, too). The governor had kept up a steady patter throughout, pork and football and Mammoth Falls--nothing remotely close to the business at hand. It was Ozio's hand to play.

"So," Jimmy said finally, "Orlando's been watching you move around the country. He's noticed that every time you go to New Hampshire, you make connections through Chicago. You stop there, see the mayor, get to know the city. That's very good, but not so good for us. It's too bad our primary is a month after Illinois. You'll never get to know us that way . . . until it's too late, maybe. You should get to know us a little better. The governor certainly thinks so. He was hoping the next time you pass our way, you'd stop in, spend a little time, get to know us better."

We'd been stopping in New York as often as Chicago, batting our heads against Wall Street, but Stanton didn't say so. He was obeisant; it was nauseating. "Absolutely," he said. "We will absolutely do that. I mean, I've been really wanting to . . . consult with your--with Governor Ozio."

"He knows a lot," Jimmy said.

Richard rolled his eyes. (Jimmy missed that.)

"Henry, you got the book?" the governor asked. The book. The book was in the car. I got the book.

"Next Tuesday we'll be up there," I said.

"Orlando is usually in the city only on Mondays and Thursdays," Jimmy said.

"Albany's on the way to New Hampshire," the governor said. Nice. "Let me check with him," Jimmy said. "Anyone got a phone?" Richard and I both did; so did Susan. We produced them simultaneously, a bit too enthusiastically. Ozio took Susan's and dialed a number; he reached his father immediately. "Yeah ... Right now . . . No, they took me to a restaurant," Jimmy said. "Listen, Governor Stanton's going to be in the city on Tuesday, but he says he's willing to stop in Albany on the way to New Hampshire. . . . Uh-

huh, uh-huh." Jimmy looked over to me: "He wants to know what you're doing in the city on Tuesday."

I glanced at Stanton: Tell them how much? He glanced at me: Some, but not all that much. I gave Jimmy the public stuff. Lunch with the Council ofJewish Organizations. An afternoon speech at the executive council of the Bar Association. A drop-by later at a teachers' union cocktail party. Jimmy relayed these to his father. "He wants to know where the cocktail party is," Jimmy said.

"Sheraton City Center."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh. . . All right, I'll ask him," Jimmy said. "He says he'll be speaking at the teachers' dinner so he'll be at the Sheraton too. We can meet there. Now he wants to speak to you," he said passing the phone to Stanton.

"Yeah. . . . I do. . . . Naw, I guess I'm with the Bulls these days--they got one or two of our boys up playing there. . . . Well, that's hard to say. . . I like 'em both. . . . You've got a fine son here. . . . I will. . . . Look forward to visitin' with you next week. . . . Right. Thanks. 'Bye."

Stanton handed me the phone. "The governor wanted to know," he said, "which I like better: the three-point shot line in college basketball, or the pros."

He was, clearly, thermonuclear pissed. My only hope was that it would wear off on the drive home. I had flicked up. I knew it. I knew, too, a preemptive apology wouldn't work. He had to let it blow. "Fuck all, Henry--fuck all," he began, when we were back at the Mansion, having dropped Richard and Jimmy off at the hotel. "You don't know fuck-all about briefing me . . . You make me look like a flicking amateur, a rube-ass, barefoot, dipshit, third-rate, southern-fried piece of shit alderman. You couldn't tell me? You couldn't look it up in the fucking book before we took the kid out? You didn't know we were playing the same teachers' conference as Ozio? What the fuck kind of operation we got here, Henry? How do we get scheduled for hors d'oeuvres when he gets the main course, anyway? I'm Ozio's flicking warm-up act. And don't think he didn't know that. But, somehow, we didn't know that. Henry, there is no way we win this thing--we even compete--if we don't know shit like that. Now we're committed, we go there, we meet--his turf, his show-

and he's top dog. Amateur fucking hour. Jimmy's probably on the phone right now, tellin' him he ain't got anything to worry about down here."

"So what's wrong with that?" Susan asked.

"What's wrong with it is, he gets more time to dick around," Stanton said. "We're putting no pressure on him. He's in no rush. All that money stays tied up. The press keeps sniffing around his governor's mansion. He's the story."

"That would be the case," Susan said, looking over at me, "even if Henry hadn't screwed up." So she was pissed, too.

"Henry, you've got to get on your bicycle, man," Stanton said, the storm passing. "Before I walk into that room next Tuesday, I've got to have a better idea what to expect than I did tonight. Okay?"

I understood, but couldn't do much about it. I called Jerry Rosen the next morning.

"Doesn't sound good," he said. "Orlando calls for a meeting only if he wants to fuck with you. The people he likes, he talks to on the phone."

"So what'll he do?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." Rosen said. "He talks to me on the phone."

Thanks, I knew that. I called Howard Ferguson III, who wasn't much better. He laughed a dry little laugh. "Oh, Orlando's just trying to fuck with you," he said. "He's a bully. He wants to see how much he can mess with your mind. just don't let him."

"Easy for you to say."

"You can't handle Orlando," Howard said, "how you gonna handle the Republicans?"

There was no campaign buzz in Orlando Ozio's suite at the Sheraton, no sense of urgency--but a powerful, primordial feeling of turf. Ozio was known for being a one-man show. He wasn't big on entourage, and the living room of the suite was empty, except for a press guy and Armand Chirico, Ozio's old law partner. On our side, it was me and the governor; Uncle Charlie and Tommy the Trooper were waiting downstairs.

Chirico knocked softly on the bedroom door, then opened it a crack and simply nodded; he turned and gestured us in, like a headwaiter. Ozio was in shirtsleeves, in the shadows. The room was dark; he had only the desk lamp on, and the television. He gave the impression of being a nocturnal creature, and he was larger than I expected him to be, with powerful shoulders, neck and hands. He'd been a pretty fair middleweight boxer until his cheek was crushed in his seventh professional bout. He was watching the local news. The sports was on. He went straight for what he thought was Jack Stan-ton's jugular: "You ever play any sports, Jack?"

"Golf," Stanton said, knowing Ozio meant competitive sports. "My father used to say that golf was the most capitalist sport--it used more land for less reason than any other," Ozio said, and laughed gently. "Papa . . . But he came from the old country. He had resentments, along with his dreams. You want some fruit, a sandwich? A Diet Coke?" Stanton refused the food, took the Coke. "Come, sit."

So they sat across from each other, in the darkened bedroom. We, staff, stood at a distance, on the other side of the bed. It was odd, uncomfortable; I felt like a servant. Ozio was into family history now. His father, his mother. The store. Brooklyn. It was impersonal, a recitation. Nothing much was happening, so far as I could see. Then: "How many people you got in your state, ack?" Ozio asked. "We've got two point three million in Brooklyn alone."

"Brooklyn is pretty remarkable--you've got a little bit of everything there," Stanton said, vacantly. Then, hoping to ingratiate, he began to talk about a jobs program we had visited in Bed-Stuy, and how much he admired it.

"You've been there?" Ozio asked, surprised and a little disturbed. "You should tell us when you're planning to come and see these things--we'll arrange it for you."

Stanton nodded, not quite agreeing to have Ozio control his movements in the state, and went off on a little discourse about jobs programs. He talked about one of his proposals--a national computer system, a way of linking everything together, a way to determine which jobs were available, which training programs got results. "We did that already," Ozio said abruptly. "We've got that in this state. Armand, get the governor in touch with Herman Gonzalez--he'll tell you all about how we did it here."

"You've done it statewide?" Stanton asked. "I knew you had that pilot program up in Buffalo."

"That's what I mean," Ozio said. "Buffalo. . ." Then, "So, how do you see this campaign, Jack?"

Stanton was beginning to feel more confident. He talked about the campaign: The president was riding high, but something was happening out there--the people felt neglected, worried. "The world's getting to be a pretty scary place for them," he said.

"You don't want to play to those fears," Ozio said. "Any jackass can knock down a barn."

"But you do have to acknowledge them," Stanton said. "I think we have to understand why we've been losing elections."

"And why is that?" Ozio asked. He could have had Jack Stanton for dinner then, but he didn't wait for an answer. He barged: "I'll tell you why--because we get defensive. We're ashamed of who we are. We try to be like the other guys--and the people know that. They get a choice between a pale copy and the real thing, they'll choose the real thing." It was boilerplate. It went on. Ozio gave a stump speech. He was a powerful big-hall speaker; the histrionics didn't work so well in a small room. Stanton sat through it politely. Finally, Ozio said, "Well. That's it. Gotta go downstairs. Thanks for stopping by. I think you've got somethingjack. A nice quality. People like you. I think you have a big future. I wrote that in my diary the other day, after I saw you on C-SPAN. Talking to kids somewhere. You're smart, you cut a nice figure. I can see you on the ticket--maybe even this year. I want you to keep in touch. I can help you. Sometimes I think I should quit this business and open a consulting shop with Jimmy--most of these consultants are ice-skaters, right? They charge an arm and a leg, and then take thirty percent of production costs on top of that. Can you imagine? Highway robbery."

He was moving us toward the larger, lighted outer room. He grew smaller in the light; he seemed older. "You come by again, I'll take you to the old neighborhood. We'll go to Gargiulo's in Coney Island. You call in advance, they'll cook a whole baby pig. I understand you enjoy a good meal."

So that was it? Had anything happened?

Apparently so. We found out two days later, on Thursday, in New Hampshire. We were in the Stanton Van, heading from Lebanon toward Hanover--a chill, slate-gray day, dead leaves roiling the highway. I got beeped, the press-urgent line from Mammoth Falls. "Dick Lawrence from the WSJ says you better get in touch right now," Jennifer Rogers said. "They want to go with something in 'Washington Wire' tomorrow."

I called Lawrence. "Hi," I said.

"You meet with Ozio?" He asked.

"Why?"

The call broke up. Before I called back, I told Stanton: "Governor, it's the Journal. They know we met with Ozio . . ."

"So?" he asked, perturbed. He was riding up front, working a stack of paper, singing along with Reba McEntire.

"I don't know." But I knew. I knew it wasn't good. I called back. "Dick. Hi, it's Henry Burton. Sorry. We're in the van."

"You meet with Ozio?"

"Why?"

"We hear you met in a New York hotel room and hit it off so well that Stanton said he'd be willing to accept the two spot if Ozio got in."

"Get out of here."

"That's your response?"

The phone crackled a little, so I took the opportunity to hang up. "Governor, we've got a problem," I said in a way that Stanton immediately took for serious. (It was worse than serious; I was already in a cold sweat.) He turned off the Reba. Turned to face me.

"Okay, Henry," he said.

"Governor, The Wall Street Journal knows we met with Ozio. They think you told Ozio you'd be willing to take the two spot if he got in." "That mother . . . fucker," he said slowly, stunned--awestruck. It was so brazen. "Pull over. Now!"

We pulled over, skidding a little on the gravel shoulder. "Goddammit, Mitch, don't kill us--just pull the damn thing over," Stanton said, jumping out. I followed him. "How much time we got?" he asked.

"An hour or so. Maybe less."

"Yeah, they'll say we missed their deadline. You think a flat denial is good enough?" he asked, knowing it wasn't. "This had to come directly from Ozio. You can just hear him talking about what a comer Jack Stanton is, what a rising star, how well the meeting had gone. Really, Governor? 'Well, Dick, since you ask.' " This was something new. Stanton was doing both sides of the conversation, including a reasonable--if bilious--Ozio impression. " 'I was explaining to Governor Stanton about the New American Community, my program for giving all Americans the sense of possibility that mom and dad had when they came here. We started trading ideas. There was real affection, mutual respect, a very good--a natural--working relationship, and Governor Stanton says the two of us would make a great team, a great ticket. And you know, it's not such a bad idea. A natural combination-North and South.' You mean, Governor Ozio, you'd take him? 'Well, Richard, if you were in that position, you'd have to think about it very seriously, now, wouldn't you?' "

"You really think so?" I asked.

"He's sucking the oxygen out of this campaign," Stanton said. "He's suffocating me. You know who reads The Wall Street Journal? People who aren't going to take a flyer on some yahoo fucking governor who says he's running for president but spends his off-hours sucking Orlando Ozio's toenails. Call the Journal guy, Henry, and give me the phone."

I did. "Hey, Dick, it's Jack Stanton--howyadoon?" Stanton said. "Yeah, we're stopped, side of the road, make sure we don't get cut off again. About this thing . . . Yeah, I think Governor Ozio may have misinterpreted it some. . . . Yeah, we did meet. We were both speaking at a teachers' thing. So we took the opportunity to visit. It was a real good visit. We talked 'bout what a great chance the party had this year, how there were a number of us who could give the president a hard time--y'know, especially on the economic issue. I mean, when was the last time you heard him say anything about jobs? That's what people up here in New Hampshire want to hear him talk about." Stanton had to attempt the pro forma detour onto his stump speech. Lawrence, a good reporter, didn't let him get very far. "Yeah, well no, it didn't quite happen that way. . . . No, I said it was important for us all to play this thing straight, have a good discussion of the issues--and then unite together behind whoever the nominee was."

Stanton's eyes were getting narrower, his face turning red. He kept his voice calm, though. "Well now, Dick, I just don't remember that coming up. . . . It's premature to even think about that. First, he has to get into this thing and see if he can beat a few of us. And let me tell you, it'd be a good thing for the party if he did come in. I'd welcome it. Look, it was a very good meeting, but this is just a misunderstanding. No big deal. Okay. Thanks. See you up here. 'Bye."

Stanton closed the phone and heaved it deep into the forest. "Get Susan," he said. "Richard, Arlen, Fergie, Lee, Arthur Kopp. Who else? Get them up here."

Yeah, except I needed a phone for that. I started into the forest. "Henry," he said, exasperated, "forget about that. Mitch, can you get us to a Dunkin' Donuts?"

We met at midnight that Saturday, in Stanton's suite at the Holiday Inn in Manchester. Jack and Susan sat next to each other on the couch, the governor positioned so that he could keep an eye on a late-night football game from the coast. "Whatcha got there, chief?" Richard jemmons asked, "Mormons versus Africans?"

He was close. "Utah State versus San Diego State," Stanton said. He took his college football very seriously. "You ever see this tailback they got at San Diego?"

Richard stretched himself out on the floor over by the wet bar. Everyone else was in those ugly, low-backed Holiday Inn "comfortable" chairs, except for Howard Ferguson, who had pulled the desk chair over and was leaning forward, dangling copies of Manhattan magazine and The Wall Street Journal JerryRosen's column with Ozio's attack on Stanton, and the "Washington Wire" item--over the coffee table. Howard ran the show: "So: Orlando Ozio," he said, playing with the alliteration, making the whole thing seem trivial. He was wearing a wrinkled gray suit and burgundy cable-stitch pullover, with his trademark Liberty flower-print tie loosened a bit, as if he'd just come from the office. He was a very cool customer. "Anyone have any brilliant suggestions?"

"Take him on," said Arthur Kopp immediately, and to no one's surprise. Arthur was the founder and director of Moderate Democrats of America. He was short, chesty and brush-cut; he went through life with the bearing and subtlety of a noncommissioned officer from the Deep South, a corporal perhaps--a brilliant piece of theater on his part, since he was a rabbi's son from Minneapolis. No one liked him much, but MoDems had been a useful podium for the governor--he always gave a good speech at their national conference and made a splash with the national media. Kopp's presence now was a subtle, interesting call: he wasn't part of the inner circle--he wasn't a Stanton kind of guy; the chemistry wasn't there (with Susan, especially, who worked overtime to steer clear of him)--but if it was going to be war with Ozio, we'd need to mobilize the moderates in the party. Of course, if it didn't turn out to be war with Ozio, Kopp would be faded back into the chorus.

Stanton was quietly obsessed about whether it would be better or worse, long-terns, to run against Ozio. "Figure it this way," he'd said on one of our small-plane trips that fall. "If Ozio's in, we run straight up the middle--which makes it easier in the general election, if we beat him. And if we beat him, we'd be a monster, a giant killer--right, Henry? 'Course, we may not beat him. Though if we ran up the middle, and lost, he'd almost have to pick us for number two. 'Course, if he ever did pick us for number two, and we had the misfortune of winning, I'd spend the next four years pullin' stilettos out my back. I mean, whut's the word for pincushion in Italian?"

The question was modulation. How sharply to distinguish yourself from Ozio, how tough to run. These were issues that did not dent Arthur Kopp's consciousness. "This is a contest between the future and the past of this party, and Ozio ain't the future," he said. "If you take him on now, you can raise your profile, define yourself as the anti-Ozio, separate yourself from the crowd."

"You don't want to define yourself as too anti-Ozio," Arlen Sporken jumped in, the anti-Kopp. Sporken--Mr. Crisco, Richard called bins--would have been loath to draw too sharp a distinction even if his media consulting firm didn't represent some of the deepest, stiffest old-left interests in the party (who doubtless figured his all-American blond hair and soft Mississippi drawl gave them public cover, made them seem Middle American). "Remember, you're gonna want to have Democrats voting for you in these primaries. You're gonna want to lead this whole party, not just MoDems." "But you can't just let him take you apart like this," Kopp came back. "First, he cuts you up in Rosen's column. Then he has you beg-gin' him for a place on the ticket in the Journal."

"He's makin' me look like a wuss," Stanton agreed. "How's this playin' with the New York money, Fergie?"

"He may be overplaying his hand," Howard Ferguson replied. "I mean, why's he so interested in cutting you up? Makes you look a little stronger."

"You'd look stronger still if you took him on," said Arthur Kopp, relentless, artless, obnoxious. "You can make this thing into a two-man race right now. You take Orlando Ozio on and you'll see the world open up to you--the media, the money guys. I called Bill Price in Chicago, Len Sewell out in California--they're looking at you and Charlie Martin, they're waitin' to see who's going to come out of the gate as the real New Democrat. There are--, "No, no," the governor was shouting, "--throw it, throw it. Shit! You see that? You were saying?"

"The money guys don't vote in primaries," Sporken said. The governor's football interruption had worked, subtly, against Kopp, whose passion for MoDem money was clashing, spiritually, with the governor's African rooting interests. It was one of Stanton's more endearing qualities: he always, reflexively, pulled for the brothers. "Governor," Sporken continued, "you've spent all this time working the teachers, the geezers, the party's natural base--they like you, but they love Ozio. You don't want to risk that. You've got the Mods, you need to solidify the base. And what if Ozio doesn't get in? You want to get into a pissing match with him now, when you may need him later?" Kopp and Sporken went on, fiercely: two unsubtle fat boys, whipping each other, while the rest of us watched them the way the governor watched sports--following it, but not too closely, waiting for the next thing to happen. Sporken, I realized, was getting the worst of it, hurting himself merely by engaging Kopp, marginalizing himself--becoming a spokesman for one wing of the party, just as Kopp was. In a situation like this, you wanted someone with perspective as your media guy, someone who could make a case without becoming it: the inner circle had to transcend all arguments. I realized then, with some reFef, that Sporken might not have all the wheels and gears necessary for his role. He might have to be . . . augmented, or paved over, before it was done. (I had a sudden, slightly orgasmic tingle: Was this the way Stanton was seeing it? Was I really beginning to think like him?) I looked over at Richard. He had snagged some couch pillows and was lying flat out, head on the pillows, arms crossed behind his head, deeply into his opaque mode, eyes closed behind his thick glasses. He hated them both, of course--Sporken and Kopp. He hated Sporken's buttery glad-handing; he hated Kopp's lack of irony and grace. At that moment he probably was hating Kopp a bit more, because he knew he was going to have to agree with him, and he couldn't stand the idea of having to side with anyone so unsubtle.

Howard Ferguson was sitting back, a slight smile on his face, not doing all that much to control this, perhaps figuring--although you could never really be sure with Howard--that if Sporken and Kopp killed each other off, we'd be rid of both. The governor hadn't raised any objections. (It was a pretty good football game.) But it was getting late and nothing was happening. Susan, finally, took the next step: "You with us, Richard?" She asked. "Or is it past your bedtime?" "Ma'am?" Richard asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Your thoughts, Richard?"

"Pollster!" Richard said, up on an elbow, addressing Leon Birnbaum, who had been sitting quietly, a thick looseleaf on his lap. Birnbaum was a little guy with curly blond hair; he had worked on Stanton campaigns for a decade and was absolutely crucial. Leon visited the Mansion from time to time and would sit with the governor late into the night, going through the cross-tabs, road-testing phrases (rather than ideas), showing him what worked and what didn't. Everything Leon said in these late-night sessions seemed insidious, conspiratorial. He spoke soft, barely audible deep Bronx: "See--`responsibility' is great when you're talkin' about welfare. 'Fair share'--awesome. Great for fat cats, too. Works both ways: Rich-and-poor! 'Do their fair share.' 'Give their fair share.' Same difference, y'know? You match 'em up: righteous us against piggy them. Rich-and-poor! See? You don't need to get too specific. The folks will extrapolate--`responsibility' sounds both tough and moral, without being primitive, y'know? Y'see?" He'd giggle: heh-heh, heh-heh. "You want to use value words. You connect midbrain, subcortical--you want to hit them down under, in their lizard brains, access their personal reptiles . . . heh-heh . . . where they don't think--where they just, y'know, react--with value words." Stanton loved that stuff. Leon was another one who was a lot more talkative one-on-one with the governor than in groups. In fact, this was the first time I'd seen him in a group and he hadn't said anything yet.

"What say you, pollster?" Richard asked.

"'Bout what?"

"We are where in New Hampshire?"

"Four." Leon smiled devilishly. He sensed where Richard was going.

"And Governor Ozio?"

"Twenty-eight, heh-heh, heh-heh."

"And Governor Ozio is willing to acknowledge our presence in this race? He has to be the stupidest fucking Eye-talian since Richard Burton fell for Cleopatra." Richard crossed his arms behind his head again and closed his eyes.

"Meaning what, Richard?" Susan asked.

"Meaning you take him on," Kopp said. "You define this thing right now."

"But you have to do it carefully," Sporken said, folding his hand. "Hold the fucking mayo, Arlen," Richard said.

"Well, how would you do it, Richard?" Susan asked.

"Drop something into a speech. Make sure Rosen and a few others--that slug at the Post, what'shername--know it's cumin'. Doesn't have to be huge. Just get Ozio's attention, let him know we came to play. Let the scorps know the governor'i got some hide on him, too." Richard called reporters scorpions--scorps for short. "Let's see where Ozio wants to take this. I'm kinds gettin' bored waitin' for that sadassed old dog to make his intentions known."

"And if he escalates?" Sporken asked.

"He's even stupider than I think he is," Richard said. "He tells America he's more concerned about a governor no one ever heard of than he is about the flicking president of the United States." "Henry?" It was the governor. "You have any thoughts about where and when?"

So it was done.

We tried to make it as classy as possible. The University of New Hampshire. A student forum on the future of the welfare state. We'd stick in the knife between points five and six, go straight at Ozio's New American Community. The governor would say, "There are those, including some who contemplate entering this race [We gave Stanton the option of adding, "and contemplate, and contemplate . . .1 who believe you can have a new American spirit of community but have it without an equal sense of responsibility, without asking the same standard of moral behavior from the less fortunate that we demand of each other--and which we should demand of the wealthiest Americans as well, I might add. It is simply misguided not to demand that each of us do our fair share. It is as patronizing as our opponents who say--well, usually they don't have the courage to say it, they merely imply--that it's useless to help the poor, there's nothing we can do for them."

Kopp was furious. His reptile brain was apparently less subtle than the ones Leon connected with in focus groups. "That's all you're gonna do?" He stormed. "Why not throw down the gauntlet? Make it clear that this election is going to be a contest between the future and the past of the Democratic--"

"Because it isn't, Arthur," I said. "The primaries may turn out to be. But the election is between us and the Republicans."

"You're sounding like that jerk Sporken."

"This is what we're doing, Arthur."

We set up an open phone line from the microphone at UNH to anyone who wanted to hear it. We told Jerry Rosen, and several other New York types, that Stanton was going to have something interesting to say about Ozio. We told some of the Washington scorps they might want to listen in, too--though we weren't too specific on the Ozio part of the program. "You want me to listen to a welfare reform speech on the telephone?" A. P Caulley of The New York Times asked. He was smart, but better known for oenophilia than initiative. "Do you think this election is going to be about welfare reform?"

"Well, that's part of it," I said. "The folks seem interested. What do you think it's going to be about?"

"What it's always about," he said. "Sex and violence."

And he was right: this was about violence.

Stanton didn't say very much as we rode the van to Durham. He didn't even play any music. He flipped through the cards for the speech, noodling with this and that, crossing out and overwriting with his felt-tip. I couldn't tell what, if anything, he was doing to the Ozio card. And then he did something odd. He asked me something personal: "Henry, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

It was two days away. We were heading back to Mammoth Falls right after the speech. I had thought about visiting Mother and her new husband, Arnie Nadouyan, in Bel Air--a Hollywood Thanksgiving: turkey and sprouts by the pool, starlets and equipment. (Arnie always had the latest in clients and electronics.) But I hadn't thought very hard about it, and now it was too late to make reservations. I'd figured I'd see what the muffins were doing.

"Would you be able to join Susan, Jackie and me at the Mansion?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said.

"You know," he said, suddenly deepening his voice and giving me his most intense look, "we've kinda come to think of you as family." "Yuh," I said, swallowing hard, hoping to gain control of my voice. "It would mean a lot to me, Governor."

And then we were there, at UNH.

And he whiffed on it.

He skipped the Ozio card. He didn't mention Ozio at all. He delivered a standard welfare reform speech--badly. The kids snoozed. I paced the back of the hall, feeling dog-tired and slightly sick. Stanton did rally during the Q&A. He was absolutely brilliant on a question that came out of nowhere, about the similarities between the black underclass and the Irish underclass of the nineteenth century. His belated virtuosity pissed me off.

I hadn't felt strongly about nuking Ozio. It was an irksome situation--the governor was, clearly, irked and that had to be respected--but it seemed a preseason game nonetheless, one of those peripheral dustups you get all tangled up in early on, before the real campaign begins. Some candidacies get lost in these distractions; others use them as a road test, a way to keep everybody occupied, see how the team reacts to stress, see what the pecking order will be; others ignore them completely. Usually they don't count for much. But we had decided to take it public. We had made the decision, told selected scorps (who would, no doubt, get the word back to Ozio). We had planned the thing, and then whiffed on it. It was not good. It smelled of weakness.

Stanton knew it. He rushed out of there, stinting his usual ration of meaningful handshakes. He almost always took special pains with college kids, desperate to lure them aboard--the social and ideological dynamic of the Eugene McCarthy campaign was written into the fiber of his being: his candidacy wouldn't have legitimacy unless the kids were on board. But he wasn't seeing them that day; they were a blur. He got into the van. He didn't turn around. He said, staring straight ahead: "I didn't want the first thing they heard about me to be negative," he said. "I didn't want to give Ozio the power to make me the sonofabitch."

He plugged Ray Charles Sings Country and Western (Volume One) into the tape deck. He worked a stack of paper.

Thanksgiving dinner was for two hundred, mostly residents of Mammoth Falls's homeless and battered women's shelters. A tent was pitched on the back lawn of the Mansion. We served. That morning, the governor and Jackie had gone out in the Bronco, trailed by a panel truck from a local market with Uncle Charlie riding shotgun, delivering turkeys to the homebound. He returned about noon, glowing, as if he'd just made love. He and Jackie tossed a football on the front lawn, waiting for the guests to arrive; neither was an athlete--but both were enthusiastic.

Jackie had, somehow, come out normal. He didn't sulk or strut, like most politicians' kids. He went to public school. He liked computers. He seemed entirely unaffected by the passions and ambitions that swirled through the household. Indeed, he was an anchor--a reminder, for both Stantons, that there was a normal world out there, where the greatest looming issues were the embarrassment of orthodontia and the need to stay awake through A Tale of Tivo Cities.

There was nothing strained or showy about their relationship with their son; the affection was deep, comfortable and unadorned. At times, when things got really bad, when I wondered how I'd gotten mixed up in such a thing, when I had to list the reasons, the image of the three of them chattering over a board game or just sitting together on the couch in the study watching a video would be the first thing that came to mind. It was the best evidence I could marshal that these were actual human beings. That the governor's egregious empathizing wasn't just for public consumption, but had some basis in his own life. That he lived a life beyond strategy.

I was, in truth, having some doubts about the entire Stanton enterprise that Thanksgiving. I had defended the governor on the phone with Richard after the Ozio whiff "He had his reasons," I said. "He may be right."

"Or Ile may be a chickenshit," Richard said. "My perfect candidate, my wet dream, is warm and strong, fucking warm without being squishy-shit and quiet, Clint Eastwood strong. Don't need a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Always wonder why more of these overgrown student-body presidents don't get it. Our boy's got the warm part knocked. I'd be feeling just a little bit more comfortable about this if we had some sense of the strong."

"I saw him in that room with Ozio," I said. "He was fine. He didn't get pushed around."

"Maybe." Richard was bored. "Where are you, anyway? Pit Falls? You bakin' any muffins?" Then, "Henri, look--don't worry 'bout it. We're in this now. It works or it don't. It don't work, you got a gig with me. You got the makins of a serious rainmaker, Henri--bring me all the black caucus business. You'd be a monster with suburban housewife candidates, too, I'd reckon. We'll make a fortune. But, Henry"--his voice turned serious--"you don't need to go getting TB on me now, y'hear? It ain't worth it. Life goes on."

TB: True Believerism. It was part of the code, consultant duende. It was what separated the men from the boys, staff from pols, servants from operators. You wanted to keep perspective. You wanted to see the horse as a horse and not Pegasus. But I couldn't. I remembered Stanton, glowing, coming back from delivering the Thanksgiving turkeys, his arm draped over little Jackie--and I knew it was hopeless. I was caught up in this thing. I had no perspective. I was a staffer in my soul. Different code.

Later, after we'd fed the multitudes--Jack, Susan, Momma, Uncle Charlie, several state commissioners and I made for a very high-profile cafeteria line (and it looked real good on the evening news that night)--after the governor had led the homeless, the meek and the halt in a sing-along, after he had repaired to the study with Jackie to watch Texas play A&M, Susan snagged !Pe at the door.

"You're down," she said.

"I'm okay."

"Come here--talk," she said. Momma and Uncle Charlie were sitting in rockers on the broad front porch, Momma yammering about this and that, smoking one of her too-long-to-be-reals; Charlie, perpetually bemused, comforted her with an occasional "Uh-huh" or "Ain't that the truth." Momma shot Susan a glance as we came out, just about missing a beat in her Grace Junction elegy, then continuing on--relieved--as it became clear we weren't going to join them. We took two rockers on the other side of the porch.

"You're down," Susan said again. "Ozio's got you down." "He outthought us," I said. "He made us look slow."

"We are slow," she said. "And anyway, you can never be fast enough for Ozio."

"You think he's that good?"

She laughed. "Nawwww," she reached over, tousled my hair like I was a little kid. "You don't get this, Henry? Ozio says it all the time, the line he stole from Sam Rayburn--`Any jackass can knock down a barn.' That's all lie ever does, sitting up there, leaking lies to this one and that one, taking potshots. And Jack has always been vulnerable to that, 'cause he's a believer."

"That could be a problem," I said, stupidly.

She ignored me, and went on. "You should have seen him back in the war days. 01' Jack seemed like a real wimp back then. You always had the guys who got up there and called the president a babykiller--it was real easy to be extreme. You were more credible if you were extreme. Jack wouldn't play that. The radicals made fun of him.

He kept his hair relatively short, for those days. He wore a jacket and tie. When we were in law school, he was always down in Washington working, working the state delegation, trying to get them to oppose the war.

"I'll never forget. There was a senator, real redneck hardball jerk, LaMott Dawson. Always going on about the 'commonists.' He found commonists all over the place, in Washington--and especially back home, especially when he was running for reelection. LaMott came from a little town northwest of Grace Junction named Anderson or Henderson--something like that. And a boy from there died. Now Jack had this thing--it was a grisly, self-flagellating kind of thing--but he'd always go visit the families of the people in the state who lost boys. I mean, he was just in school, right? What business did he have? No one else but Jack could get away with this. The obvious question would be 'Why ain't you over there in 'Nam, sonny?' And Jack would have to answer, seriously, 'Trick knee, ma'am.' He was so embarrassed about that--don't know what he hated more, the war or his excuse for getting out of it. But he'd go as often as he could, visiting the families. And he'd always find a way to get through to them, to comfort them. And the hard work paid off. He caught a break--up in Henderson, of all places, LaMott's hometown. He found Mrs. Ida Willie West, who said she had half a mind to go up to Washington and tell them what a waste she thought this whole business was.

"Well, Jack supplied the other half a mind. He raised the money from some antiwar sources. He brought her up to LaMott, who didn't want any part of Jack, of course. Everyone knew what Jack was about. But Ida Willie wouldn't go in to see hint without Jack, and Jack told Sherman Presley--you know that sonofabitch was working for LaMott back then--that it would be unfortunate if the Mammoth Falls News-Tribune found out that Senator Dawson was refusing to meet a Gold Star Mother who wanted to meet with him. So they met. And Ida Willie just came out and asked, 'Why'd my boy die?' And LaMott goes on about commonists. And Ida Willie said, 'Now, LaMott, didn't we always take care of you?' And she talked about all the things the community had done to get LaMott ahead over the years--you know, they spot the smart ones like Jack and LaMott, and, in a lot of towns, they'd only get to college--good Eastern schools--because the Rotary took up a collection and they called it a scholarship fund.

"Anyway, Ida Willie West. She reminded LaMott of every bake sale and scholarship drive the town ever did for him, and she said, 'We took care of you. And now I come to ask you why my boy died, and you trot out that same bull-rinky about commonists you always trot out at election time. This is more important than an election, LaMott. My boy's dead. Now, why'd he die?' LaMott didn't have shit to say for himself. And Jack--our Jack--let him stew in it for a moment, and then he bailed him ow. Can you imagine? He said, 'Now, Mrs. West, you know public officials like Senator Dawson have a lot of tough decisions to make. They have to try to look at the big picture, as well as the individual hves. And sometimes they get lost in the big picture. Maybe it's come time for the senator to reconsider his position on the war. You know he wouldn't want to feel responsible for any more boys like yours dying. Isn't that right, Senator?' Well, of course, LaMott was too proud to change right then and there. He promised to consider it. And give him credit: within a month, he was out on the floor, making a speech. It was a tough thing to do if you were from the South back then, unless you were an intellect like Fulbright. And, believe me, LaMott Dawson was no genius. But he turned around. We had his vote after that. And Jack did it."

It had turned dark and colder. A light breeze raided the last of the brown leaves lingering in the seasonal trees. "So how'd you get me started on that?" she asked.

"Ozio."

"A grown boy," she said. "A yakker. He isn't half the man Jack Stanton is. So, Henry, don't be a jerk about this. Jack knew what he was doing."

"Why'd he let us get out there, public and all?"

"'Cause sometimes"--she laughed--"it takes a while for Jack to know what he's doing. But don't worry about this."

"We look bad with the scorps."

"When it starts, it won't mean anything."

"When will it, you think--start?"

"When Ozio decides." "What do you think?" "Oh, he won't go," she said. "And it's too bad."

"Why?" I asked.

Susan stood, ready to go back in. "Because," she said, "I would just love to have had the opportunity to crush that scumbag."

Chapter III

Thirty of us were in the back room at Slim's after the final New Hampshire war party, the weekend between Christmas and New Year's. The campaign was down; the Stantons were off in Florida. "Well, we sure as hell planned the shit out of the next few months," Richard muttered. "Except for the woman thing."

"WHAT woman thing?" Lucille Kauffman asked, too loud, too sharp; the entire table went quiet. Lucille was an old Susan friend with a disconcerting sense of ownership about the campaign. She assumed herself part of the inner circle, and the Stantons never said otherwise, and so she was-when she was around. Most of the time she was lawyering in New York. She kibitzed by phone. Tiny things: She didn't like Jack's ties. She didn't like the color of the campaign posters. And larger things: the staff was stupid; disloyal; uncomprehending. She was an antic conspirer; she was out for blood. She wanted a friend of hers, Laurene Robinson, hired as press secretary. She wanted Sporken replaced. (We wouldn't have minded that.) She threatened to take a leave and join the campaign full time. All Mammoth Falls quaked at the thought.

Richard would have despised her even if she weren't dowdy and awful, even if she didn't always wear power suits and running shoes and Gloria Steinem aviators, even if she wasn't always rousting around in her purse for her compact, fussing with her hair, pulling out lipstick and applying it in the most ridiculous manner, squeezing her puckered lips around it, rolling it once, twice, then saying--always"There!" No, even if she'd been benign, Richard would have hated her because she was an amateur. "Lord save me from friends and amateurs," he would say.

This was a basic Stanton problem. He had been collecting friends since kindergarten, with the intention of bringing them on board when it was showtime. Some were very good; others were okay; others, long defeated by the world, were testaments to the utter unpredictability of life--knowing Jack Stanton "back when" was the most notable thing they had ever done with themselves. Lucille was in a category all her own. She was awful beyond imagining. She was one of those people with no sense of human spatial dynamics--always a step too close--and no sense of propriety. She would say whatever came to mind: the mere fact that she had thought it made it significant, she believed. Indeed, the campaign had exacerbated this: Since she was Susan's best friend from college--since she knew Susan better than anyone--people actually acted as if the things she said were important.

She was very dangerous. She scared me to death. She raised questions about Susan I didn't want to consider.

"What woman thing?" she asked Richard. "You put ketchup on your steak? God."

She was picking at a salad. Everyone else was eating steak--which was, indeed, the only dish on the menu at Slim's. Obscene, steaming piles of beef were stacked on platters along the tables, interspersed with piles of fried onions and potatoes. It was all very excessive and primal. "This ain't Noo Yawk, honey"--Richard dismissed her. "You gonna play politics in America, you can't be put off by the customs of the natives. Americans eat steak with sauce." Then, to me: "Say a woman conies forward and says--"

"Bullshit!" Lucille said. "It's not going to happen."

"Maybe someone classy," Richard went on, "like a Democratic Party activist."

"No!"

"Someone he popped at the 1984 convention."

"Never!"

"Right," Richard said. "I don't think so either. I'm just trying to figure out how it would work. You gotta figure he ain't gonna get trapped, like Hart. He knows the rules. Some bimbo from a former life comes forward, and we just say--Bullshit."

"Bullshit is right," Lucille said. "I don't know why you're even talking about this."

Interesting. Lucille seemed frightened. She averted her eyes when I looked at her instead of staring back and saying, "What? What?" as she normally would. What was it? Did she know something? Or was it, perhaps, that she so completely imagined herself the voice of Susan Stanton in the campaign that she was reacting now as she imagined Susan might?

The other thing was: I felt the same way. This was something I didn't really want to think about. But that, I knew, was bad staff work: Richard was doing his job--and, as always, saying aloud something we all thought about but were too embarrassed to say. We had just finished two days of meetings, going through the calendar, coordinating it all--paid media, fund-raising, debate schedule. We had spent an entire afternoon meticulously figuring out the opposition--not just our three opponents, but the media as well. Brad Lieberman, a gift from the mayor of Chicago, had made the trains run on time--a brisk coordination of schedule, fund-raising, advertising, message. Brad had made it all seem controllable, a rational process, and everyone was feeling very up.

The money had been rolling in since Ozio folded his hand. He had gone out in a lather, furiously, defensively, ridiculously, trying to make up his mind until the New Hampshire deadline passed, then announcing that his state's perpetual urban crisis prevented him from running, for the moment, but that he might reconsider later, if none of the candidates addressed the issues raised by his blather about the need for a New American Community. It was a total flameout. Manhattan magazine ran an Ozio cover with the headline "Zero for 0.0." Wall Street cracked open like a pinata; we'd been pulling in bundles from the big houses, pledges averaging $175,000 per day for the past two weeks. And so, this dinner, all of us arrayed at two long tables in the back room at Slim's, had a celebratory air: We were about to launch ourselves into battle--and we had the hot candidate.

The last few weeks in New Hampshire had been very encouraging; Stanton had been awesome on the stump; we were picking up endorsements from key activists. The word was spreading. Various bigfeet from the papers, even some columnists, were beginning to come out--Ozio's departure meant that it was time for them to pay attention to the rest of the field. They'd been impressed by Stanton, for the most part. We were, suddenly, plausible in New York and Washington--the days when Jack Stanton was seen as a possible vice president were over. We would have forty-eight hours off now--New Year's Eve and New Year's Day--and then the war would begin. And we were up for it.

"I'm talking about this," Richard said, relentless, unable to give up the woman thing, "because all that planning ain't gonna be worth shit when it happens. Because if we can't know what it's gonna be, we gotta sense what it might be. And you know it's gonna be something. Right, Henri?"

I didn't know. I was glad the conversation had contracted againsomehow--after Lucille's initial outburst. There was laughter down the other end of the table, Lieberman telling Chicago stories. Richard was freight-training, somewhere between a whisper and a mumble, swallowing half of it; I was sitting next to him and it was hard to keep up. He was rattling through the possibilities.

"Say a woman, a plausible woman, comes forward--but, then, you figure, if she's plausible, why'd she come forward? Act of coming out undercuts her credibility, y'knowhattamean? And why? Revenge? Politics? Money? Money, we're okay. Money, she has no credibility. 'Less she conies in quiet, hits on Stanton quiet--and he, jerk, pays off." "Richard!" Lucille again.

"Outta guilt or somethin'. But that ain't a problem. The problem is a serious woman conies forward. But a serious woman, by definition, wouldn't. 'Less . . . Y'think he ever porked a Republican? But even with that, say he was doing a serious Republican woman and she comes out."

"It's not pos--"

"Shut up, Lucille," he said. "Y'think, maybe, we can just admit it--I mean. if it's someone plausible? Say, yeah, it happened, the flesh is weak, the sexual revolution. Didn't everyone fuck up sometime, the last twenty-five years?"

"Richard, I don't want to-"

"Lucille, why cain't you be true?"

"It's Maybelline." Another county heard from: Daisy Green, Sporken's junior partner. She was sitting next to Lucille (on assignment from Sporken, no doubt-he knew Lucille was looking to coup him).

"Saywhut?"

" 'Maybelline, why can't you be true?' You're mixing it up with B. B. King's guitar. That's Lucille," Daisy said. She was mortally thin and poky. She had the look of someone who'd spent far too much time indoors-which she did, cutting and mixing spots for Sporken. She was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with nothing written on it, and jeans. She was very New York; outer boroughs, clearly. Her mother's generation, it might have been CCNY or Hunter, and left-wing politics. She was more polished-Ivy League, probably-but still, a touch of the accent, a roughness: she hadn't worked overtime assimilating. She smoked cigarettes.

"Who give. fuck?" Richard said.

"Just if you're gonna be authentic, Richard."

"Awww." But she had managed to move him off the woman stuff-a move she may have immediately regretted.

"Hey, are you sure about no plaid?" Lucille asked, turning on Daisy now. "You know, Pendleton? It's New Hampshire. He looks stiff in the suit."

"He's running for president. We shot the ad with him sitting on the desk, instead of behind it-that's informal enough."

"You want to get their attention," Lucille said. "You don't want him to look like just another politician. You want something like Gary Hart with the ax."

"Right-that's exactly what we want," Daisy snorted. "How about this for a tag line: Jack Stanton-A Gary Hart Democrat." Very nice: she wasn't intimidated by Lucille. "Every other fucking politician in the race is wearing a plaid shirt, or a ski outfit or some flicking thing. People understand bullshit this year. We have to establish: no bullshit."

"Harris did skiing," Lucille said. "Nobody thinks he's a bullshitter." "He had a heart attack. He needs to establish he's still alive." "You have to smoke those things? You'll have a heart attack yourself."

That stopped Daisy.

"You don't want to do that in public, either," Lucille said, pressing her advantage. "We don't want people to think Jack Stanton's people are--s(okers, right? I mean, if they can't run their own lives, how do they run the country?"

"Like five-hundred-dollars-an-hour New York fucking lawyers," Richard said. "Whaddya do for five hundred dollars an hour, Lucille? And who do you do it to?"

"Very funny. You're another one: we really want the public to see Jack Stanton has sonic hillbilly who looks like he was sired during the love scene from Deliverance running his campaign."

Daisy cracked up: "Not bad, Lucille." But I was worried. Lucille was so awful, to clunky--why did Susan keep her around?

Someone was tapping a glass. It was Sporken. "I want to propose a toaa--"

"Make me puke," Richard muttered.

"--to the New Year, the year we change America," Sporken said, "and to the team--this great, great team--that will make it happen." There were whoops and cheers. I looked around the room and wondered about the team. Daisy caught me looking, saw what I was seeing.

It rained that night, and froze. Mammoth Falls was a mess; jagged, angry icicles hung from power lines and tree limbs, the streets were skiddy, terrible. The morning news led with an eight-car pileup on the interstate. The airport was closed. I walked to the office; no one was there and the lock was frozen. It was an odd cold, not bitter-sharp like up North; at first it hadn't felt in bad, but now my ears were tingling and I wondered what to do. There would be a trooper on duty, and probably Annie Marie, at the statehouse, up the hill from the campaign office. I needed to call the Stanton at Marco Island, just to check in, give an update on the New Hampshire meetings. I had my phone, but I didn't want to stand outside, shifting around, having to take notes, and who knows what else, in the cold. I felt paralyzed, depressed, vapor-locked. I had to go to the bathroom. I started up the hill toward the statehouse, slipped and fell--hard--on my butt, and then I did it again, trying to get up. I rolled over onto the crunchy ice in the island between the sidewalk and street. The traction was better there--not bad, in fact, crunching up the hill--but it was raining again now, and harder, too. I put up my umbrella, a gust yanked it out of my hand. It bounced down the hill and I decided not to chase it. The trooper at the door was new, didn't know me and was suspicious. "Just call the governor's office and tell them Henry Burton's here," I said.

"You don't have a staff pass?"

"I'm not on the gubernatorial staff," I said, a little too huffily. "I'm on the campaign staff. Please call the office. It's extension 3258." "Hold your horses, there, young fella," he said. "I'll call the damn gu-ber-na-TOR-ial office."

The gubernatorial office was humming. Stanton was on the phone with Annie Marie, directing the ice storm. "Henry just came in," she said, then handed the phone to me: "He wants you."

"Henry, all's well?"

"Seems so. You want me to go through what we did?"

"No, I know. I checked with Richard and Lieberman. Here's the deal: I want to do LA."

"You sure, sir? It takes us out of New Hampshire two weeks before the primary."

"It's money, Henry. And warm weather. We're doing fine. At least, it looks like we are. You hear Leon's numbers? Shit. But, then, it's early. We got a lifetime between here and the election, all the time in the world to fuck up. You think it's okay? You think there's something we're not doing?"

"I can't think of--"

"Listen, here's what I want," He said, cutting me off. I still wasn't quite used to that. He never really wanted an answer when he asked how he was doing, just reassurance--and he would settle for anything, even Sporken's inevitable, transparent "Great, great, just great, Governor." It was banal, unworthy; I couldn't get used to it. "I want a conference call with the Gang of Five--let's try Wednesday, morning sometime, after whatever breakfasts we have." He began to laugh. "You hear what Richard is calling the Gang? The Elders of Zion? We can't let that out." He laughed again. The Gang were his economic advisers. "But tell them we gotta figure out how far on health. Charlie Martin's gonna hammer us on that. And tell Rosenbaum that I'm still waiting on his tax cut numbers." David Rosenbaum was the policy-staff numbers sherpa. "And listen, tell Annie M. I want the names and home phones of every family involved in that bender on the interstate, right? So what you doin' tonight, Henri?" He was doing the Henri bit now. "Muffin hunting, or just stay at 'home and crack open a bottle of Chablis?"

"I'll go to the staff parry," I said, affecting a slight pissed-off chill. "You know we opened it up to the public, trying to get the kids in town someplace safe for New Year's."

"Great idea. Who did that?"

"Jennifer, Eric. I don't know. They're very good."

"You, too, my man," he said, picking up on my mood. "Henry, listen careful now. Two things. One, I want you to get your ass out of that office and kick back today, y'hear? Rest. Have some fun. Do something for yourself, y'know? Then you come out and meet me in Manchester on Tuesday. I want to start this thing with you there. The other thing is this. Susan and I were talking: You're the best goddamn thing happened to us this year. Happy New Year, and thank you. I know what you do, and how you feel, and how hard you work. I'm honored by it. Honored. You hear? Now listen, this is very important: Do you think it's at all possible for you to get yourself laid tonight?" He was laughing. "I'm serious. I don't want you too horny to think straight, okay?"

"Yes sir," I said. "You have a happy New Year too. And thank you." "And tell Annie M. I want those phone numbers, right? And--we're doin' okay, dontchathink?"

"Just fine," I said.

I went back into the governor's private office to call Mother in LA, and found Daisy Green was sitting there, tiny, behind Stanton's big desk, oversize horn-rims on, studying Leon's cross-tabs, smoking a Marlboro. "Hey," she said, "this stuff is un-fucking-believable. You see how we're doing with World War Two veterans? They don't give one half of a shit about Vietnam. They love him."

"You shouldn't smoke in here," I said. "He'll walk in three weeks from now and choke to death."

Daisy stubbed it out. "You see the focus groups?" she said. "I'm a little worried about the tax cutting. They're onto it. This is going to be a very cool year, I think. They're thinkin', y'know? They're into it. They're ready for us. It's amazing none of the big Dems went, but, then, they're Dems, right?"

"What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked, but not harshly. "Ice storm," she silt, closing Leon's binder, shoving the horn-rims up her forehead. "We're all still here. I had to get out of the hotel. They're all down pacing the lobby, hating each other--Arlen, Jemmons, Lucille. It's the most awkward fucking thing. Didn't want to babysit any of them. Richard's jiggling around, wanting to get in my pants again. 'Got a wet bar in my suite, Daisy Mae, got movies, it's lahk--pair-ah-dahse.' I told him to go hit on Lucille--'You could save her life,' I said. Richard--" She was laughing now, belly-laughingshe couldn't get it out. "--Richard . . . Richard says, 'Lucille? I could neither achieve nor sustain with that woman.' Never heard that one before. Meanwhile, Arlen's trying to charm the shit out of Lucille. He's all over her. He's eating breakfast. She comes down, pointedly picks another table. He gets up, moves his runny, yucky, half-eaten eggs to her table. She says, 'Eggs, Sporken? Cholesterol.' Yikes. That woman is like a figment of George Romero's imagination."

"Who?"

"The zombie movie hack. Brilliant hack."

"Oh." I looked at her, and couldn't resist the obvious--her candor demanded it. "Again? Get into your pants again?"

"Richard?" She laughed. "Last year in Atlantic City. He was so nutty Election Day, had to do something to calm him down. We'd been through it by then, he'd brought that suckball--talk about zombies--he'd brought that suckball zombie prick, Jeff Millar, all the way back, and then the asshole choked in the last debate. But the debate is on against a gazillion points, y'know? Like Roseanne and Sex Lives of the Rich and Famous--so maybe no one was watching. Anyway, we're really sweating the last twenty-four hours. We get the final tracking at midnight, and we're holding. We're both so relieved that--well, you know how it is in campaigns: indifferent sex, great companionship." I had stretched out on the leather couch below the giant photograph of the state university football stadium, filled to capacity with people dressed in orange, two tiny teams on the field. It seemed an entirely bizarre artifact; but, then, the governor's office was filled with bad local crafts--cutesy, calico, primitive stuff. "So," she continued. "I'm stuck here. I'm not going back to those lunatics at that hotel. You wants catcha movie?"

"This is America," I said. "No movies in town. You have to mall it." "Any video stores downtown?" She was up, rousting about the governor's closet for a phone book, then gone to the outer office and back, flipping through the yellow pages. "Got a couple nearby. Look, let's see if they're open, you got a VCR at your place, right? We can hang out--"

"No, I have things--"

"Oh come oti, Henry. Let's lose a couple of hours, huh? It's New Year's Eve. We're out here in America. You don't have a date or anything?"

I shook my head no before I thought about it. She wasn't going to let it go. "Okay," I said. "But let me make a phone call first." "Personal, huh?" She caught everything. "Okay. You do that. I'll go outside, call around these stores, see who's open."

I made the call. Told Mother I'd be out there with the governor in early February, and that she and Arnie should buy tickets for the fundraiser. Arnie got on. He and I had never had a tense step-relationship. For one thing, we'd never lived in the same house--I was pretty much grown before he turned up; for another, he had the genius salesman's gift, which was no gift, just an easy, inherent kindness. "So I'm gonna waste my money on Stanton?" he said. "They say he fucks around." "He's a good man, Arnie. You'd like him."

"I didn't say fucking around is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. It's basic. Like your position on abortion or something. You want a guy who's got juice, right? A human being." Good old Arnie: never disagreeable. "You should only work for guys who fuck around, Henry."

It had stopped raining. The storm had broken apart in the sky; heavy clouds were interspersed with sharp patches of deep blue. The sun was in and out. Daisy looked profoundly unglamorous, the hood of her nondescript sweatshirt up from under a blue down jacket, covering her mouth and eyebrows; only dark eyes and her stubby nose, quickly pink in the cold, showed. It was suddenly warmer whenever the sun poked through. "The planes may be going soon," I said hopefully.

"Third Street, you assume would be three streets from the capitol, right?" she said.

Right. "I know this store," I said. "They only have garbage." "Good," she said.

"Good?"

"Well, what do you want, Henry? Boudu Saved from Drowning? Let's see something great and crappy and kinetic."

"You pick it, then," I said. The store was a combination smoke shop, newsstand and videos. I checked out the magazines, which included every known wrestling, muscle-building, heavy metal and biker title, a garish and oily rack. Daisy was back in a flash. "We're in luck-look what I got."

"The Abyss? You're kidding, right?"

"James Cameron," she explained. "Awesome director. I live for his next movie. You see Aliens? You got any food at your place?"

We bought sandwiches at Subway. My apartment wasn't far, down by the river. "This is unreal," she said, as we went up the stairs, past the tricycle, big wheel and baby carriage on the lower landing. "Very exotic, living in Mammoth Falls, in a building with families. And just look at this place," she shrieked as I opened the door. She was laughing. "This is fabulous, fan-tastic, Henry!"

"Just your basic efficiency-"

"Efficiency doesn't begin to cover it-maid service, Henry? Or do you do this?"

"Excuse me, but I've got to see the fridge. The fridge is very important." She leaped across the room, opened the door, whooped and doubled over. "Henry, too much, too much." I looked and saw what she saw: Yogurt, neatly, top row. Perrier, neatly, second row. Paul New-man's marinara sauce, a half gallon of orange juice, various condiments in the door. "Henry," she said, "no half-eaten pizza? No Diet Coke? No beer?"

"Sorry. I usually just eat breakfast here."

"Yogurt? No Cocoa Krispies or anything interesting?" She closed the fridge and wandered over to the windows, inspected the books on the ledge. "Novels?" she asked.

"Escape."

"You escape with Doris Lessing and Thomas Mann?"

"Different strokes," I said, lamely.

We ate the sandwiches. She wanted to smoke a cigarette afterward; I got a saucer from the cupboard, tried not to seem too fussy. Then a logistical problem: the television was at the foot of the bed. The couch and easy chairs were diagonally across the room, over by the light--and a nice view of the river. I toyed with the idea of turning the television around, to face the couch across the room, but it seemed--fussy. Daisy, who continued, uncannily, reading my mind, said, "The bed, Henry? You've set the scene for a seduction." She whipped off her sweatshirt. She had a Princeton T-shirt on underneath and no bra--but not much need for one. She seemed smaller, younger and tiny, without the sweatshirt. "Okay, okay. I'm practically a guy . . . up top," she said. She did have a nice--pert, sexy in a businesslike way--bottom.

"Okay," I said. "The Abyss."

It took place underwater, and was sort of spiritual. I fell asleep. It was dark when I opened my eyes. The movie was over, and I sensed that she'd been sleeping too. Her head was under my chin; her hand was on my stomach, warm and soft, unbuttoning and moving slightly now, stroking. It was odd: her hair smelled of cigarettes, but her mouth didn't when she tilted her head up toward me. It was a thoughtful kiss, not pushy; nice. Everything proceeded apace. The clothes were shed effortlessly, without tugging or elbows. She was wiry, spidery, twined all over me--but there was no embarrassment here, no awkwardness; she was neither too active nor passive, she continued to read me. It was, in fact, very--pleasant. It was thoughtful, intelligent. Until it stopped, rather too abruptly. My fault. "Sorry," I said. "Campaign sex."

"But great companionship," she said, kissed me and snuggled under my arm. "Jesus, Henry--Leon's numbers do look fabulous, don't they?"

It seems hard to believe now, but we were geniuses for two weeks. We were rolling. The crowds were good in New Hampshire; the money was good; the press was good. The opposition was lovely. Charlie Martin, the hippie Vietnam vet, still couldn't believe he was running for president and had difficulty remembering what his message was from day to day; his biggest news cycle came when he started a snowball fight and caught Barbara Walters in the back of the head as she was heading out of the Wayfarer. She was very cool. She turned, put her hands on her hips and shook her head, about to scold him--but her frown slowly dissolved into a knowing, sardonic grin. He was a child. Nothing needed to be said. Good-bye, Charlie.

Barton Nilson, a senior senator and former governor of Wisconsin, was going nowhere as a prairie populist--he was traveling the state in an IW, camping out instead of staying at hotels, and offering Franklin Roosevelt's jobs program (forestry, road-building) to out-of-work computer jockeys. He seemed ancient at sixty-rwo--slower, less hungry; it was a valedictory campaign. He had a great head of hair--silver, parted in the middle: perfect prairie-populist hair. He gave grand, juicy speeches in a voice made for crystal radio sets--a dry, crackly, distant, American voice. It was like running against a museum. We were ignoring him, hoping he'd go away before we hit the big mid-western primaries. He showed no signs of disappointing us. And then there was Lawrence Harris, who wasn't considered a serious candidate after three heart operations, but he was the most interesting and formidable of the lot. He was a favorite son, with a farm up near Lebanon. He'd settled there after two distinguished terms in the U. S. Senate and two heart attacks. "I am running as a classroom exercise," he said, and it was true: students from his poll sci and political process classes at Dartmouth were staffing the campaign. They had formulated ideal, nonfudge positions on all the issues. The students were making cute commercials, too--in one, the ski-run ad, the candidate creaked down some moguls, pulled up to the camera position and said, "Ahhh, gravity--such a delightful natural force! The world is full of wonders. Natural forces we can use, more profitably, to our advantage. The wind, the sun are clean and safe. We need to tax dirt, save the earth, balance the budget, serve our grandchildren," at which point a horde of children raced into his arms, knocking him over on his skis. Not bad. Richard called Harris a Neo-Martian, since none of his positions were vaguely plausible in the real world, but he did cause problems, mind-game problems, especially for Stanton, who'd always been the most serious policy guy in every campaign he'd contested. The governor hated the idea that someone else might be the darling of the National Public Radio crowd. "Y'all can't be seriously worried?" Richard said to him as we skidded along route 101 one day on our way to the seacoast, where Stanton was scheduled to pull balls at an Indian bingo parlor. The governor was up front, Richard was in the backseat leaning very far forward, trying to get as close to Stanton's ear as possible. "Folks up here don't mess around. They think it's their patriotic duty to choose a president for all the rest of us pathetic redneck shitheels. They ain't gonna waste a vote on ol' Natural Forces. They're just gonna use hint to make you work a little harder--which ain't a bad idea. You can't let up. You're coasting."

"But he's making me look bad on the tax cut," Stanton said. "Bad where?" Richard asked. "Oh! I know: Doo-doo-doo-dahhh, doo-doo-doo-dahhh," he said, viciously parodying the theme song for All Things Considered, making it sound idiotic. He was out of the backseat now, on his knees, squeezed between Stanton and Mitch, the driver. I reached over, fingers scraping the tan leather sleeve of the high school letter jacket Richard still wore, and tried to tug him back. No luck; Richard was into hyper-Richard. "Leon has this whole thing breaking our way--you are running even with Harris in Hanover, for Chrissake--and you are worried about the fucking Nina Totenberg vote? You wanna worry? Worry about somethin' real. Worry about the asshole from the Times who hates your butt because you went north to college and he went to UNC-Charlotte. Worry about the Republicans, who will soon know every time you pulled your pud. Worry about the woodwork, and which slime-bucket crawls out of it first. Forget Natural Forces. A fart is a natural force."

Richard remained crazed about the woodwork, which hurt him a bit with Stanton: the governor was able to slot it, dismiss it as another of Richard's obsessions. He tended to do that. He had everybody slotted, and could handicap their advice accordingly. I didn't mind when Sporken and Kopp, or the Gang of Five (each of whom had a brilliant, utterly impolitic silver bullet) rutted themselves in their self-aggrandizing tangles, but I didn't like Richard falling into the same trap. He needed to stay credible with Stanton.

Luckily, he wasn't around-physically around-much. He came up twice for debate prep. But he was driving me nuts on the phone. Five, six times a day. Always: "Y'hear anything?" No. You? "Happy Davis says the LA Times snoopin' round somethin'. She thinks it's drugs. Whatcha think-a woman?"

"Happy Davis is a gossip columnist."

"So? Look, Henri, we're flyin' blind. We don't know shit about this guy. We need to hire someone. Oppo our own self. This is fuckin' crazy for us to be sittin' around, scratchin' our balls, so much at stake." He had a point. But no one had the guts to approach Stanton on it-least of all, Richard. He would call me at the office, page me on the road. The eightieth time or so, I returned his page from a high school gymnasium in Nashua. Stanton was just finishing up a town meeting-awesome as always on the Q&A, moving up the aisle aglow, conferring meaningful handshakes on the multitudes-and I said to Richard, "Goddammit, tell him yourself," and handed the phone to the governor.

"You're nuts, Richard," Stanton said, laughing. "The Cowboys are gonna beat the spread." He handed the phone back to me.

"Thanks for joining us," I said to Richard, "for this week's edition of campaign profiles in courage."

"We're gonna get fucked, Henry, and it's going to be our own damn fault."

I was worried too: It was all too good too soon. We roared into the first debate, a month to the day before the February 17 primary. It was held in a converted knitting mill, the new home of a local TV station, in a large room with the feel of a SoHo loft, smelling of plaster and polyethylene. There was to be a live audience, equally divided between civilians and half the known political world--it was the first great tribal event of the season for the scorps, the first chance for the heavy hitters to see us in action.

It was a strange scene. No individual greenrooms before the show: the four candidates were thrown together with their wives and seconds, a coffee urn and chocolate chip cookies in a bare room with newly painted white walls. Stanton overwhelmed the room, or so it seemed. He created his own dysfunctional family--Charlie Martin was his raffish, goofy younger brother; Bart Nilson was dad. But Lawrence Harris wasn't playing: he sat off to the side, checking his notes and carrying a copy of Scientific American with "The Promise of Desalinization" on the cover. He drove Stanton crazy, standing off like that--the governor kept glancing over at him and, I could swear, ever more egregiously chatting up and charming the others. He was eared into Nilson bigtime; he loved the old coot, loved listening to his stories. "Henry, c'mere," he said. "Senator Nilson was just telling me about the time Hubert Humphrey tried to get Eisenhower to move on civil rights, back in the fifties. Senator, this is Henry Burton--you know, the Reverend Harvey Burton's grandson." He could be an absolutely shameless asshole when it suited him.

"Really?" Nilson asked--shocked, suddenly ashen. "I marched with your grandfather. I was there when he was . . ."

Shot. But Bart Nilson was too proper to go on. His eyes filmed over--Stanton's too, I was certain, without looking. "We've got to keep that spirit alive, don't we?" Nihon said, touching my arm. "We got pretty close there for a while, Henry. Pretty close to makin' it happen." "Yes sir," I said.

"We'll make it work again, Senator," Stanton said, fixing him very close. "One of us is gonna do it," he said, with a certainty that almost caused Bart Nilson--who knew it wasn't going to be him--to recoil. "You see how the folks are, right? You can feel them--hungry for something, worried. I don't think the Republicans understand that yet." "Republicans never understand that," Charlie Martin said, laughing. "The only thing they want to do is scare the shit out of 'em. But, hey, Jack, I love hearin' you talk that sixties shit. The idealism! The Movement! The sex. I'll bet you got laid four hundred times while I was getting my butt shot off." Stanton quickly glanced over at plain, dowdy Elizabeth Nilson, standing just to their left, alone at the coffee urn. Charlie caught the look, shrugged, mouthed: "Sor-ry." (Susan and Martha Harris, who'd never be mistaken for anything other than the women's studies professor she was, were engaged in deep, animated conversation across the mom--Susan, it seemed, was having better success penetrating the Harris Curtain than the governor, but, then, she came from their class.)

"Hey, Jack, I have this great idea--let's mess with Harris's mind," Martin said. "When they ask us about taxes, and he trots out his Natural Forces fee, or whatever he's calling it, let's say it's not enough. I'll say, Double it! Then you can say, 'No, higher.' Bart can say, 'Maybe we should tax unnatural forces, too.' "

"Gee, Charlie," Stanton said. "That would just be stone hilarious, wouldn't it? I'm sure the Republicans would love it to death." "I guess," Martin agreed wistfully. "And some of our folks are so fucked up righteous, they'd probably think we weren't kidding. But it would be nice to strafe Larry a little. He didn't used to be so saintly when we were freshmen together. I didn't know when you have a heart attack they stick a cork up your ass." Then: "Hey, Jack, speaking of righteous, what did you have to promise Harriet Evergreen? She wanted me to agree that every piece of paper my administration used would be recycled."

Harriet Everton was the leading enviro-lunatic in New Hampshire. She had been giving Stanton grief about the huge pig-processing operations down home, and the clear-cutting he'd allowed in the piney woods. So he'd taken the pledge on recycling to shut her up, and was beginning to redden a bit now (and Charlie Martin saw it).

"She was all over me about a vote I made on acid rain eighteen years ago," Bart Nilson said.

"So you caved, Jack?" Charlie Martin pressed. Happily, though, someone said, "Gentlemen," and it was time to roll.

The debate started out a breeze. Stanton seemed very cool, presidential--and, to everyone's amazement, out of the line of fire. It wasn't hard. The others were murdering themselves. Charlie Martin tried to explain his very elaborate health-care scheme and got so bollixed up that he threw up his hands and said, "Well, this thing makes a lot more sense on paper than it does when anyone talks about it. But you know, we do this, and our national energy level will just, just . . . explode!" Then Nilson and Harris got on each other. Nilson went into his usual stump number about how we ought to spend a lot more money helping folks off welfare: "Give 'em a ladder, not a safety net." And Harris, incredibly, went after him. "How can we serve our grandchildren if we're spending all this money providing pickaxes to people who need to be computer-literate?"

"You think the folks'll be willing to pay your dollar-a-gallon gasoline tax and get nothin' back except owin' ourselves less money on the national debt?" Nilson said, truly angry. Harris's bloodless aloofness promised a Democratic Party very different from the blue-collar, lunch-pail outfit Bart Nilson had signed on with.

"It's not a gasoline tax," Harris said, with enough condescension to start Charlie Martin giggling. "It's a Virgin Sources Usage fee. And a lower deficit will mean--"

"A better life for your bond-holding fat cats," Nilson shot back. The wise thing for Stanton to do would have been to stay down, let them kill each other. But he jumped in ("No! No!" Daisy Green whispered, squeezing my hand hard), acting on a deeper need than political expediency, the need to be a peacemaker--and to ingratiate himself with Lawrence Harris. "Not just the bondholders, Governor Nilson," he said. "Working families will have lower mortgage rates, small businesses will be able to borrow money on better terms and compete in the world. A modest but steady reduction in the deficit will be good for all of us."

Okay. Not bad. But shut up. But no: "Of course, Governor Nihon does have a point. We do need to provide jobs for those who need--" "Hey, Jack," It was Charlie Martin. "What, if anything, are you against?"

There was laughter in the hall. Not a lot. But laughter.

"I am against doing nothing while people are suffering." Stanton was furious. "I am against the style of government that says, Waitthings'll get better. Just wait. I am against that kind of patience. I am impatient when it comes to the people you and I--all of us--have seen up here, the folks who worked hard all their lives, did what they were supposed to do and suddenly the bottom drops out. You've seen their eyes, you've heard their stories, Senator Martin. Are you saying we should do nothing to help?"

"Well, of course not," Martin began and then stumbled through a convoluted acquiescence. He was toast.

We dashed to the spin room, another loftlike contrivance one floor down, with rows of long tables and a press podium. Me, Sporken and Laurene Robinson triangulated and began working the room. (Lucille Kauffman had had her way; Laurene, a tall and smooth young black woman, was now press secretary--and not bad, I had to admit.) We were very cool. It was a good night. It was fine. A good, substantive debate on all sides. We were satisfied. Even Sporken knew enough not to launch a "Great! Great!" barrage. Losers spin; winners grin. "But didn't Senator Martin have a point?" asked Felicia Aulder, a real pain in the butt from the New York Daily Neon She hated us for some reason. She loved Charlie Martin--or, rather, she loved Charlie's pollster Bentley Benson, who fed her all sorts of chow for her "D. C. Wash" column and was quietly, we knew, plying her with "woman trouble" rumors. "What is Governor Stanton against?" "I think the governor explained that," I said.

"They were laughing at hint," she pressed.

I looked away, and caught Laurene's eye. Something was wrong. She needed help. The question was, how to get over to her side of the room without bringing along my swarm of scorps--especially Felicia. "Listen," I said, "gotta go--" and I headed toward the door--with Jerry Rosen tagging along after me, a puppy in love, his arm around my shoulders, whispering in my ear, "Awesome, awesome. You're gonna wrap up the nomination by Valentine's Day."

I went out the door. Waited one, two, three, four, five. Then back in, over to Laurene's side. Everything scented fine at first. Then a tall, gaunt, pockmarked fellow approached me, "Mr. Burton, maybe you can help me?"

I looked at Laurene and saw that this was the problem.

"I can try," I said. The other scorps were still pummeling Laurene--tactics, advertising plans, fund-raising, bullshit. They didn't know this guy. He wasn't one of the regulars.

"Was Governor Stanton ever arrested during the Vietnam war?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I can ask him and get back to you."

"All right," he said, too calmly. He knew what he was doing, and he had something. He handed me a card: Marcus Silver, Los Angeles Times. "You're covering the campaign?" I asked, hating to have to show any sort of interest or concern, but needing to know.

"Not really," he said. "Special projects."

As I feared.

"Okay, I'll get back to you."

But he got to Stanton first. It was about fifteen minutes later. I'd gone down to meet the governor in the holding room. He was there with Susan and Uncle Charlie-and in a foul mood. "Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go."

"What about Laurene and Sporken?"

"What about them? Let's go."

And we were moving, down in the stuffed, sweaty elevator out into the sharp, clear, very cold night, sweat and chill and confusion, television lights and shouts of "Governor . . . Governor . . ."

We moved toward the van, past the lights and into a bitter cold and darkness. The ground was slick. We were near the van, and there was Marcus Silver. "Governor," he said, very calmly, and, again, his calm penetrated the frenzy like a knife. Stanton stopped.

"Governor," I said, trying to push him along.