street?"
I had their attention all right.
For a minute the plane filled up with the muted roar of the engines. No human sound at all. And then Burton—Burton smiled.
"What are you thinking, Rob?"
"A great presidency is a marriage between a man and a moment," I said. "You told me that. Remember?"
"I remember."
"This is your moment, sir. You have to stop running away from it."
"What do you have in mind?" Lewis asked.
I answered the question, but I never even looked Lewis's way as I did it. I just held Grant Burton's gaze. It was like no one else was there at all, like it was just the two of us, and despite everything that's happened since, that's the closest I've ever come to making history.
"I want to find Dana Maguire," I said.
I'd been in politics since my second year at Northwestern. It was nothing I ever intended—who goes off to college hoping to be a senate aide?—but I was idealistic, and I liked the things Grant Burton stood for, so I found myself working the phones that fall as an unpaid volunteer. One thing led to another—an internship on the Hill, a post-graduate job as a research assistant—and somehow I wound up inside the beltway.
I used to wonder how my life might have turned out had I chosen another path. My senior year at Northwestern, I went out with a girl named Gwen, a junior, freckled and streaky blonde, with the kind of sturdy good looks that fall a hair short of beauty. Partnered in some forgettable lab exercise, we found we had grown up within a half hour of one another. Simple geographic coincidence, two Californians stranded in the frozen north, sustained us throughout the winter and into the spring. But we drifted in the weeks after graduation, and the last I had heard of her was a Christmas card five or six years back. I remember opening it and watching a scrap of paper slip to the floor. Her address and phone number, back home in Laguna Beach, with a little note. Call me sometime , it said, but I never did.
So there it was.
I was thirty-two years old, I lived alone, I'd never held a relationship together longer than eight months. Gran was my closest friend, and I saw her three times a year if I was lucky. I went to my ten year class reunion in Evanston, and everybody there was in a different life-place than I was. They all had kids and homes and churches.
Me, I had my job. Twelve hour days, five days a week. Saturdays I spent three or four hours at the office catching up. Sundays I watched the talk shows and then it was time to start all over again. That had been my routine for nearly a decade, and in all those years I never bothered to ask myself how I came to be there. It never even struck me as the kind of thing a person ought to ask.
Four years ago, during Burton's re-election campaign for the Senate, Lewis said a funny thing to me. We're sitting in a hotel bar, drinking Miller Lite and eating peanuts, when he turns to me and says, "You got anyone, Rob?"
"Got anyone?"
"You know, a girlfriend, a fiancée, somebody you care about."
Gwen flickered at the edge of my consciousness, but that was all. A flicker, nothing more.
I said, "No."
"That's good," Lewis said.
It was just the kind of thing he always said, sarcastic, a little mean-hearted. Usually I let it pass, but that night I had just enough alcohol zipping through my veins to call him on it.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Lewis turned to look at me.
"I was going to say, you have someone you really care about—somebody you want to spend your life with—you might want to walk away from all this."
"Why's that?"
"This job doesn't leave enough room for relationships."
He finished his beer and pushed the bottle away, his gaze steady and clear. In the dim light his scars were invisible, and I saw him then as he could have been in a better world. For maybe a moment, Lewis was one step short of handsome.
And then the moment broke.
"Good night," he said, and turned away.
A few months after that—not long
I had their attention all right.
For a minute the plane filled up with the muted roar of the engines. No human sound at all. And then Burton—Burton smiled.
"What are you thinking, Rob?"
"A great presidency is a marriage between a man and a moment," I said. "You told me that. Remember?"
"I remember."
"This is your moment, sir. You have to stop running away from it."
"What do you have in mind?" Lewis asked.
I answered the question, but I never even looked Lewis's way as I did it. I just held Grant Burton's gaze. It was like no one else was there at all, like it was just the two of us, and despite everything that's happened since, that's the closest I've ever come to making history.
"I want to find Dana Maguire," I said.
I'd been in politics since my second year at Northwestern. It was nothing I ever intended—who goes off to college hoping to be a senate aide?—but I was idealistic, and I liked the things Grant Burton stood for, so I found myself working the phones that fall as an unpaid volunteer. One thing led to another—an internship on the Hill, a post-graduate job as a research assistant—and somehow I wound up inside the beltway.
I used to wonder how my life might have turned out had I chosen another path. My senior year at Northwestern, I went out with a girl named Gwen, a junior, freckled and streaky blonde, with the kind of sturdy good looks that fall a hair short of beauty. Partnered in some forgettable lab exercise, we found we had grown up within a half hour of one another. Simple geographic coincidence, two Californians stranded in the frozen north, sustained us throughout the winter and into the spring. But we drifted in the weeks after graduation, and the last I had heard of her was a Christmas card five or six years back. I remember opening it and watching a scrap of paper slip to the floor. Her address and phone number, back home in Laguna Beach, with a little note. Call me sometime , it said, but I never did.
So there it was.
I was thirty-two years old, I lived alone, I'd never held a relationship together longer than eight months. Gran was my closest friend, and I saw her three times a year if I was lucky. I went to my ten year class reunion in Evanston, and everybody there was in a different life-place than I was. They all had kids and homes and churches.
Me, I had my job. Twelve hour days, five days a week. Saturdays I spent three or four hours at the office catching up. Sundays I watched the talk shows and then it was time to start all over again. That had been my routine for nearly a decade, and in all those years I never bothered to ask myself how I came to be there. It never even struck me as the kind of thing a person ought to ask.
Four years ago, during Burton's re-election campaign for the Senate, Lewis said a funny thing to me. We're sitting in a hotel bar, drinking Miller Lite and eating peanuts, when he turns to me and says, "You got anyone, Rob?"
"Got anyone?"
"You know, a girlfriend, a fiancée, somebody you care about."
Gwen flickered at the edge of my consciousness, but that was all. A flicker, nothing more.
I said, "No."
"That's good," Lewis said.
It was just the kind of thing he always said, sarcastic, a little mean-hearted. Usually I let it pass, but that night I had just enough alcohol zipping through my veins to call him on it.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Lewis turned to look at me.
"I was going to say, you have someone you really care about—somebody you want to spend your life with—you might want to walk away from all this."
"Why's that?"
"This job doesn't leave enough room for relationships."
He finished his beer and pushed the bottle away, his gaze steady and clear. In the dim light his scars were invisible, and I saw him then as he could have been in a better world. For maybe a moment, Lewis was one step short of handsome.
And then the moment broke.
"Good night," he said, and turned away.
A few months after that—not long
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