The Three-Day Affair (9 page)

It all went back to Nolan’s first political campaign.

Before then, I’d never traveled west of the Mississippi River. A year earlier, with my band stagnating and love life nonexistent, I’d have gladly traded the callous streets of New York for twenty million acres of corn and soybean, for wide autumn skies
unspoiled
by smog. For four weeks, that would’ve been a real treat.

By the summer of 1996, though, High Noon was performing in better venues and beginning to generate a little attention. Low men on various music-industry totem poles were starting to make vague promises. When Nolan called and asked for my help, I knew that the rest of the band wouldn’t take well to my leaving.

But it’d always been my conviction that nothing trumped
loyalty
to a friend. So I begged the band for their understanding—and if not that, their forgiveness—and I agreed to fly to Missouri in early October and stay there through the election.

Then Cynthia came into the picture.

When I met her, she was a senior editor at
Center Magazine
, a Manhattan arts and culture weekly. One night she happened to catch the band’s set, and afterward she came up to us and asked
for an interview. Even the low-wattage room didn’t dim her
intelligent
blue gaze. I liked looking at her. A red beret capped her head like a cherry on a sundae, and a small stud pierced her nose. Her smile was friendly and unguarded. She looked like the girl next door if the girl next door had spent a year in Europe.

She plucked a golf pencil from behind her ear, and in the little notebook she was carrying she scribbled down the date and time when we would meet. She thanked us repeatedly, as if we were the ones doing the favor.

We all met up later that week at an Irish pub near the NYU campus. Cynthia set a tape recorder on the table, and for the next two hours she ordered pitchers of McSorley’s and asked us
questions
. I liked that she talked about music as if it mattered, but not as if it mattered more than it actually did. And I liked her
vocabulary
, such as when she asked the band if we thought that grunge was here for good or “evanescent.” This turned me on.

When the interview was over, she stopped the tape and my bandmates all made polite excuses and left. Only much later, when our relationship was secure, would I reveal to Cynthia the secret behind those quick exits. It’d all been prearranged.
I don’t ask for much
, I’d said to my bandmates before the interview, hand on heart.
Please—give me this chance alone with her.
The guys,
romantic
fools the lot of them, agreed.

Alone with Cynthia, over the next two hours I fell in love little by little.

There was beauty, of course, but this was New York City, where beautiful women seemed to outnumber the pigeons that flocked every park and street corner. No, what got me was that in a city of manufactured looks, manufactured personalities,
everything
calculated and posed, she seemed genuine. Everyone I met those days claimed to earn a living as a musician or writer or actor or painter. Hearing people talk, one could only conclude that the
city must have been suffering from an alarming shortfall of
waiters
and receptionists.

Yet Cynthia didn’t hesitate to tell me that
Center Magazine
was new and underfunded. Also, that despite having the title of senior editor, she made most of her money working as an administrative assistant for a public relations firm. I revealed my own secret: to help with bills, twenty hours a week I worked for minimum wage at a recording studio.

“Occasionally they let me near the sound console,” I explained. “But mostly I answer the phones, clean the bathroom, and go on sandwich runs.”

“You and I live glamorous lives.” She smiled and patted the back of my hand.

When we left the pub, I walked her to the subway and asked for her number. She had that notebook with her, but she wrote her number on the palm of my hand. We saw each other twice more that week. And for the first time I understood why so many sentimental movies took place in Manhattan. The city’s grit and trash suddenly seemed coated with a romantic veneer. I found myself smiling to pretzel venders and subway-token salesmen, buying candles and artwork to spruce up my crumbling,
roach-riddled
apartment. And hoping.

The article came out two weeks later. In my view, she’d made the band out to be far more interesting than we actually were.

“You should be our publicist,” I joked.

“Actually, I’ll probably move into PR eventually,” she told me. “It pays a lot better than arts journalism.”

More significant than the substance of this exchange,
however
, was its location: my apartment. Specifically, my heretofore unremarkable bed, new candles burning on the nightstand, music from a nearby street fair wafting in through the open window.

I leaned over and kissed her. She kissed me back. Then we just lay there awhile, enjoying the music. We were lazing away a
perfect
, autumn Sunday afternoon, after spending our first night
together
. Exactly two days before I had to leave for fucking Missouri.

I packed my suitcase, endured a terrifying flight through black thunderstorms, and landed in Kansas City. Rented a Chevy Blazer.
Be sure it’s an American car
, Nolan had warned.
People notice these things
. Then drove ninety miles into Missouri’s heartland, to the Albright family farm in Nodaway County.

When I’d met Nolan that first day of our freshman year in
college
, I’d asked him what town he was from.

“Town?” He’d shaken his head. “No town.” If you needed to send him a letter, he’d said, you used the zip code for Stokesville, five miles to the south.

In the last several years, however, the city limits of Stokesville had expanded those few miles to include the farm and the land around it. Farmers saw the city’s expansion as an opportunity to sell their land for development. Not Nolan’s parents, though,
despite
their property’s appealing location at an intersection of two county roads. They still worked their hundred-acre farm as the town steadily encroached on them. Driving to the farm, I passed a lot of new construction—a residential neighborhood, a row of stores—and I could see into the future to a time when there would be car dealerships and chain restaurants and gas stations,
eventually
a shopping mall, and then it would look exactly like the
America
I’d grown up knowing.

Although Nolan rented an apartment in town, he still referred to the farm as home. From there he ran his campaign. As I pulled up the driveway, a small black terrier ran in front of my car. I stopped the car and got out, and the dog barked comically and spun around in a few circles. A moment later, Nolan came outside.

“When’d you get Cujo?” I asked.

“My mother got him from the pound a couple of months ago. She said she’d always wanted a little dog.”

Nolan’s mother was responsible for his interest in politics. She’d studied political science in college and, for a couple years, had an administrative job at the statehouse in Jefferson City. That was before meeting Mr. Albright and moving to Stokesville, where she became a more than capable farmer.

But in the spring she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. Radical mastectomy, chemo, the whole mess. Nolan hadn’t told me much—it obviously upset him to talk about it—but he did say it’d come as a real shock. His mother had gone to her doctor
several
months before and been assured that the lump she thought she felt was nothing to worry about.

“How’s your mom doing?” I asked.

“I don’t like the wig,” he replied. “Makes her look old.
Otherwise
, she’s doing all right.” He sighed. “I mean, no she isn’t. But we’re trying to be hopeful, you know? Anyway, she likes me
running
the campaign from home. That way she can still feel part of it.” He bent down to pet the dog, which had flopped over and was wriggling on its back. I noticed its collar had rhinestones on it. “Molly’s a good dog. We had a couple of hunting dogs growing up, coon hounds. They were good dogs, too, but this one’s
different
. This one’s my mother’s dog.”

Nolan took one of my bags, and we went inside, led by Molly. The house was two stories and decorated with simplicity, even elegance. I hadn’t ever been to his family’s farm before, and
certain
touches—a retro-looking leather sofa, a framed Rothko print—struck me more as SoHo than Missouri. (My urban bias would dissipate in the weeks that followed to the point where, upon returning to New York, I’d find myself bristling at rude waiters and jerking awake at night with every passing wail of a
patrol car or ambulance.) The house’s single nod to its rustic
location
was a cow skull hanging over the mantel.

A dozen or so people of all ages were standing around the
living
room and looking grave. Nolan explained to me that they’d convened in order to assemble the one thousand yard signs that were due to be delivered that morning—they were already weeks overdue—but he’d just gotten word, moments before I arrived, that the delivery was being delayed again.

“I needed for them to be made locally,” Nolan explained, “but I’m starting to think the manufacturer doesn’t support our campaign.”

“You mean they’re intentionally—”

“Welcome to Missouri politics.” He clapped his hands. “All right, people,” he said to the room, “we have work to do, signs or no signs.”

They divided into canvassing groups and spent a few minutes looking over maps and lists of registered voters. Then they went out to their cars to convince the citizens of District Twelve that it was “all right to vote Albright.” Nolan’s father went with them—after giving me a bone-crunching handshake—wearing a T-shirt that said, “Vote for my son.”

Only after they were gone did Mrs. Albright come downstairs. She had on blue jeans and a loose-fitting sweater. I hadn’t seen her since graduation. I didn’t remember her being a small woman, but she looked small now—shrunken, and tired. The wig wasn’t so bad, though.

She smiled and took both my hands in hers. “It means so much to Nolan to have you here,” she said.

I told her I was glad to come.

“You’re a good friend,” she said. “You always have been. Now fix yourself a snack—I’ll bet they didn’t give you anything on that plane.”

She was right—I was starving. Nolan and I went into the kitchen and Mrs. Albright headed back upstairs. When she was out of earshot I quietly asked, “Do you want to talk about …”

He shook his head. “I’d rather talk about
any
thing else.”

So I asked him about all the canvassing his volunteers were doing. I wanted to know if it actually worked.

“You don’t win elections around here with radio or TV ads,” he said. “Not that we’ve got the money for that anyway. Here, the personal touch is everything. Meeting voters, shaking their hand, hearing what they have to say, telling them what you’re all about. Reminding them that you’re from these parts, and your family is from these parts.” His voice seemed to slow down a notch. I
detected
the drawl that seeped in sometimes during a college
debate
. “And it doesn’t hurt to have a secret weapon.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

He laughed. “
You
, that’s what. The volunteers are dedicated and some of them are even smart, but not one of them can really think, let alone write a good sentence.” My job, he explained, besides helping to keep the volunteers organized, was to crank up the
campaign
’s publicity effort—writing press releases to all the local
papers
, letters to the editor, and updates to the campaign’s newsletter. Plus, I’d overhaul any campaign literature that I felt needed it.

He showed me the magazine rack with all the press coverage so far: newspapers, mostly, but a few glossy magazines—
Missouri Monthly
and the
Princeton Alumni
Weekly
.

On a table in the living room was a computer and laser printer. Nolan opened a file on the word processor. “Here’s my position on every issue that affects our district,” he said. “Take the
afternoon
and read it all. Tonight, you can ask me anything you don’t understand. But now,” he said, heading for the door, “I have the important job of getting a haircut.” He grinned. “In Missouri,
hippies
don’t win elections.”

When he left, I opened the
Princeton Alumni Weekly
to the
half-page
article about Nolan and sat down at the table with it.

Since college graduation, the
Alumni Weekly
appeared in my mailbox with surprising regularity given the number of times I moved from apartment to apartment. Sometimes I’d flip through the magazine and read about a famous alumnus or a winning sports team. And I’d always look at the “Class Notes” section for my year. When I first graduated, I’d read about students enrolled in law school, medical school. I’d read about weddings. So many weddings. Sometimes there’d be a photograph of the happy
couple
surrounded by fifteen or twenty other alumni in their suits and dresses.

Soon after came the babies, and with them the clichés—“bundles of joy,” “prayers answered,” “little miracles”—along with interchangeable, fat-cheeked photos.

And then, life’s housekeeping apparently over with, my
classmates
got down to the serious business of achieving. They
became
partners at law firms, consulting firms, investment firms. They became venture capitalists. They traveled to countries I’d never heard of to stamp out diseases. They climbed unclimbable summits, swam unswimmable rivers. They produced Hollywood movies and published novels and, like Nolan, created important organizations.

The article about Nolan focused on the nonprofit organization he’d founded. It summed up what I already knew. The year after graduation, he interned for a Missouri congressman in
Washington
, DC. While there, he started up Students for Peace.