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“You might know John from some of your classes,” Tonkin said, pointing to the bearded student closest to him. “He has offere
d to help out with odd things: answer
calls, take minutes
,
and such. And Tanya here is my new volunteer website updater and online person. And here we have Carla, who has offered to help me with some translations. She’s new this semester, just transferred from Georgetown, right?”

Tucker gave benign nods
to
the
recruits
.

“Tucker,” Tonkin introduced, “has been working with me for the past year. He knows everything about how I work and how my office is set up. Anything you need supply-wise, ask him. He’s been answering some e-mails and
doing some media monitoring, so
Carla, I may have you take over some of that if it keeps up at this
pace. I need Tucker to
focus on doing write-ups for me. By the way, Tucker, I have a press conference tomorrow, so I may have you look over my statement tonight.” Tonkin paused for a moment as he lost his train of thought. “For now, I need Tanya to stay and talk over some things with me. Tucker, find chairs for John and Carla, they should have computers by this afternoon. I’ll let you decide where they should be set. Can everybody meet here again at noon?” Tucker looked at the other three and wondered when or if he’d be having lunch.

John and Carla followed Tucker down the hall to the graduate student offices, a big room full of desks with div
i
ders between them,
most crammed with text
books on foreign policy, journals, and empty cellophane wrappers.

“John, take this one,” Tucker said, gesturing to
the first empty space he saw
. “It has a phone hook-up. Sorry it’s so cramped. Carla, you can have this desk.”

“Do you have any coffee around here?” Carla asked, putting her purse down. Tucker led her through the labyrinth of chairs to the coffee machine in the far corner of the room. She stood straight and moved with confidence, like someone who naturally expected to be in charge. She would have been intimidating to Tucker if he hadn’t been a foot taller.

“So, you can translate?” Tucker asked. “What do you speak?”

“I went to high school in Laos, so I’m fluent in Laotian. I speak a little bit of Thai and Mandarin, too, but not as much.”

“Your parents were in the military?”

“My dad is a military contractor. He sets up communication equipment and trains soldiers on how to use it. What about you
r parents
?”

“My
parents met in the Peace Corp, but we moved back here when I was little. Now my dad
teaches history at the middle school in Ashland and coaches
basketball, and my mom
teaches French. A
nd they both run the family farm
.
We stayed pretty busy growing up.
” Tucker realized that he was explaining more than he needed to. “Your folks still over there, with all that’s going on?”

“No,” Carla said, “but I still have friends there. Hey, listen.” She tossed her hair back and lowered her voice. “About Dr. Tonkin.
He seems kind of stressed with this whole thing. Is this… I don’t know how to ask this. Is this typical of him? Everyone talks about him like he’s this foreign policy genius, but in the office today he seemed like he was in over his head.”

Tucker shrugged. “I mean, this isn’t exactly what he had in mind for this week. The Secretary and him thought this would be four days of talking and hammering out a joint statement about unity and good will. But now it’s been a week of press conferences and tough questions and a deadline for getting everyone into formal negotiations before an old Thai man
keels
over from starvation
in front of the world
. So, yeah, he’s in over his head, but he is smart. He wouldn’t be in on all these meetings if the big g
uys up there didn’t trust him. O
r if Pot didn’t trust him.”

“Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot, too,” she said, smiling. He smiled back, a little dazzled.

“Um, yeah,” he said. “I mean, I help out, do some research for him sometimes when there’s something he doesn’t have time to look up.
Not that he always
reads
them
. I did a thing on South Korea last week and h
e hasn’t said anything about it. But with everything going on, I don’t really care
.”

“South Korea?” Carla looked confused. “Aren’t they neutral?”

“Well, yeah, but—it doesn’t matter.
The memos are the small stuff
. Checking his speeches
and press statements
takes a lot longer.
H
e needs more done tonight
, which sucks
. I have a lot of people coming
over
to watch the game
tonight
.”

“Wait, he has
you
check his press statements?”

“Yeah, why?”

Carla surveyed him with meditating eyes. “Why don’t you let me do it?” she finally asked. “
You deserve a night off, and h
e said he
was going to
have me do some of the writing anyway, if things get too busy. Why don’t you just forward me whatever he sends you, and I can take a look at it and get back to you. He won’t even have to know it’s from me; I’ll send it back to you when I’m done.”

Tucker felt a sudden surge of gratitude. Here was a woman who understood the importance of basketball. “Are you serious? You’d really do that? But it’s gonna be two or three pages, and you’ll have to fact check everything, review the most recent
statements from everyone that’s involved, think up possible follow-up questions. You sure you got that?”

Carla shrugged. “That’s what I’m here for,” she said. “Actually, if you have some other revisions that you’ve done for him, I can read over those to get a sense of how you’ve been doing it.”

“Sure, I can e-mail you like fifty of them. I’ve been doing this stuff for a year
. Listen, if you finish in time
—and
you probably won’t, but still—
you should come over
to
my place
.
There will be plenty to drink all night.”

“Maybe,” she said. Then she looked at the time. “Hey, I need to make a call before noon. I’ll be looking for your e-mails then, huh?” She spun on a dime and stepped crisply away. Tucker caught himself watching her leave. He flinched slightly, instinctively, as if anticipating that Lena would slap him up the back of his head at any second.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

The sun was just setting that evening as
Tucker drove west to the Mollifly Motel
,
a few miles outside
the city. In the passenger seat was a peace offering sealed in Tupperware.

He had to park his car three blocks away and walk up. What had formerly been a dive completely unknown to anyone but the desperate or cheap had become a permanent campground for international reporters and activists. Wol Pot and his delegation had moved there from a high-profile downtown hotel the day after the hunger strike began, as it wasn’t exactly effective to protest poverty and hunger in an elegant four-room suite. The small motel was feeling the pressure of image, too. It had been forced to take down the sign touting its great continental breakfast after a wave of snarky comments on the cable news channels.

The motel itself was now inaccessible; police had cordoned
it
off and security details were posted at every entrance. The public could gather, but only on the opposite side of the street. A reverent congregation of forty or fifty supporters, each holding a lit candle, stood in vigil. Tucker recognized several from NSAC, the Nebraska Social Action Coalition, of which Lena was
the ringleader.
Some in the vigil were praying, some were chanting
, some in English, some in Thai.
Tucker made his way to the front of the crowd, using the
streetlamps and candlelight to find the back of the head of the person he had come to see.

It had been five days since he’d seen Lena, two days since they had spoken on the phone, and six hours since he’d received the e-mail strongly
suggesting
that he show up to the vigil. He hadn’t written back; she didn’t know that he wasn’t planning to stay.

“Wazzup, girl,” he said, tapping
Lena
on the shoulder.

“Finally, you’re here,” she
said, turning and shushing him
.
“You can get a candle over there.”

“I
can’t stay
. I’ve got everybody at my place to watch the game. You should come too, babe.”

She heaved an angry sigh meant to be understood by everyone nearby, though Tucker ignored it.

“Look, I even brought you some Skyline Platter
so you’ll know what you’re missing
.” He lifted the lid from the Tupperware container and revealed a crooked stack of chips, homemade peach salsa
,
and melted cheese that was the nucleus of his locally-famous party dish. A man next to him turned at the smell and looked at the food with some longing.

“What is wrong with you?” Lena scolded. “This is a vigil for people who are fasting!” She snatched the container out of his hands and closed the lid tight. Then she grabbed his arm hard and pulled him out of the crowd to a safe distance.

“Tucker, if you didn’t come to support us, what are you doing here?”

“I came here for you,” Tucker said defensively. “It’s freezing out here! You’re starving. You’ve barely eaten more than Wol Pot.”

Lena just folded her arms and raised her eyebrows with
the
disapproving look Tucker had seen countless times.

“Lena, you all are wasting your time holding candles out here in the cold when you could be back at my place getting warm, is what I’m trying to tell you.”

“I’m sorry,
wasting
my time? You came here to tell me that I am wasting my time by showing my support for a man that you and I both know and respect? You’re telling me that it would be a better use of my time to come down to your place with all your drunk roommates and watch a stupid game?”

Tucker bit his lip to keep from reacting to the blasphemy of “stupid game.”

“Okay, that didn’t come out right. But babe, listen to me. I know what you all are trying to do. I get it. And you’re right. I like the man, too. But I’m saying that it doesn’t matter how many people you get out here and how many news programs show you all on prime-time TV, it isn’t going to change the reality that…”

“That is
not
what we’re trying to do, Tucker. We are
not
t
rying to manipulate anyone here!
There are people dying of starvation right now, and we have it in our power to let them know that however long it takes, we will work to get them the help that no one else is giving them. The only way a hunger strike works long-term is if there’s continuous support and attention, and that is
my
responsibility.
Our
responsibility.”

Tucker looked down at his impassioned girlfriend, always most beautiful when she was fighting for a cause, and shook his head.

“Lena, he’s almost done. If he survives long enough to be extradited, he either won’t last long as a leader, or Many Hands will assassinate him, or…”

“Many Hands wouldn’t do that,” Lena butted in.

“Oh no?” Tucker had to stop himself. He hadn’t come to debate
politics
. “Lena, all you’re doing is keeping him up with a bunch of candles and creepy chanting. Meanwhile, the best basketball team in your school’s history will be playing Gonzaga in one of their most important games ever. And it’s all happening when your boyfriend has a
per-fect
bracket for two rounds straight. This will never happen again!”

Lena snorted disgustedly. “How can you think that witnessing the heroic effort of someone who’s right here is less important than watching some college boys play basketball a thousand miles away?”

Tucker couldn’t help himself. “You’re the one who planned this whole thing for the same
night
. The whole school, except for you and these people, will be watching this game at the same time, indoors, with heat, and with surround sound. And I can tell you that you do not want to be listening to that man’s stomach growling in surround sound, ‘cause—”

“Tucker!” She smacked him hard on the shoulder. “That man is doing something real, and you know it. The only reason you came out here is because you feel guilty that
I’m
doing what
you
should be doing.”

“Oh, I’m the one that should feel guilty, huh? I’m not the one that secretly convinced a bunch of kids—including
all
of your NSAC friends—to go rob grocery stores to make a statement. You know how many people got arrested because of what you did? And you did it so that
he
looks like the one
who organized the whole thing,” said Tucker, gesturing to the motel.