Far Afield

XVII

119 XVII A week went by. I was now working hard and anticipating the onset of imminent exhaustion. Nightly, I returned to my hotel around one or two a.m., winded after a hard day of intricate scheming and public orchestrations but oddly, also brimming and rampant with ideas for the next. One morning a radio speech with paid boosters and canned effects, the next day a parade of supermarket and rest home appearances, then returning press calls that evening and dreaming up slogans for billboards and banners . . . it was a temporary madness state I’d entered into. I felt a sort of bottomless electricity powering my thinking and I refused to budget my attention to anything not related to the hectic dispensation of duties and events. I now traveled with a cellular phone and pager, ate irregularly and badly, and kept two full sets of clothes in the car, for it also grew unbearably hot during this time. I also filled a half dozen reporter’s notebooks with my notes and impressions, as well as a multiplying list of names of those who promised help and money, as well as their schedules and phone numbers and a running total of how much we’d gotten from them and how much had been pledged all together (when I truly throw myself into something , even unwanted assignments, I submerge completely. Later, in recalling my fervor, I frighten myself). What kept me in such a state? Well, for one, I was being badly ground up in the machinery of proliferating details. In all the elections that I’d been privy to, there were usually many people attend- 120 Far Afield ing to the sort of minutiae that now filled my time. Here, however, the scheduling of appearances, as well as the bus rental the next afternoon, the refrigerating of drinks and sandwiches, the arranging for the hundreds of folding chairs, etc. were solely my concerns . Tending to the growing press inquiries and making copies of speeches, brochures, and fliers also took hours each day. And since I was the one who’d convinced Trevor back into the race, it fell to me alone to take on these jobs, his small retinue of supporters having fallen away with his original decision. In retrospect, I’m afraid I drove poor Wilkie particularly hard during this time, though he was never less than well-humored and helpful, even in the midst of onerous errands, hours of traffic, and days that began at six a.m. I also kept in touch with Sono, though not as frequently as I’d envisioned. She was greatly occupied with the other candidates, as well as with the occasional assignments that broke through the continuous wall of political coverage, and had little time for anything but brief communiques. I did sense, however, that her thoughts had shifted favorably in my direction; that is, since my immediate job of making Trevor president also fell within her wishes, whenever I did call, she seemed glad to hear from me. It was at the hard end of another day, in fact, when I phoned her office to leave a message and she unexpectedly answered, that I suggested we meet for coffee. “It’s too late for coffee,” she said, her keyboard audible in the background as we spoke. “How about drinks?” Without waiting for my reply, she named a place and told me to wait for her. Twenty minutes later, we were seated in a dark booth at the Dunbar-dori Airport lounge, a spot where she thought we would be left alone from those who might see us and interrupt us either with work or their company. She ordered a rum and diet cola and began smoking from a pack of ultra-light mentholated cigarettes. “It’s going well for you, isn’t it?” she asked. “They say you’re getting actual turnouts these days.” In the bar’s dim light, I could see her automatically taking out her notebook and pen. “Better and better. Maybe you should see for yourself.” She shook her head. Scott Brown 121 “Can’t. Trevor still doesn’t have a chance. It’s Stanley and Van Gland they want, at least until the numbers change.” “When does your next poll come out?” “Day after tomorrow, along with analysis.” “You may be surprised.” “It’d be nice to think so.” She mashed out a cigarette...