Primary Colors (11 page)

"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 o
f t
he 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 wha
t s
he 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 pulle
d y
our pud. Worry about the woodwork, and which slime-bucke
t c
rawls 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?"