Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [61]
Shannon knew the first time she saw him. His voice was soft and smooth and lulling, his build was fit and strong. As he spoke, her eyes went in and out of focus and she couldn’t make herself look away. He was on TV, but it seemed like he was in the room, talking only to her.
Dan sat next to her on the couch, staring at the TV screen, his eyes still and his mouth open. He shushed her when she started to say something. “Do you know who that is?” he asked her. His voice sounded hushed, like he was speaking in a church. “That’s our next president.”
“Do you really think?” Shannon asked. She rubbed the back of Dan’s neck. “It would take a lot for him to win.”
Dan finally turned away from the TV. He looked disappointed as he shook his head. “You’ll see, Shannon,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll see.”
Later, Shannon would tell everyone this story. She would explain the way Dan’s voice changed when he spoke, the way it made a little hop of worry enter her chest. Her friends would humor her. “I’m sure on some level you did know,” they would say. “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” they would add. It didn’t matter. Only Shannon knew how she felt that day when she first saw the Candidate. Only she knew that his voice made her start sweating, made her heart beat fast, the way an animal reacts right before it’s attacked.
Dan had always loved politics. He was a cable news junkie who yelled along with the left-leaning political pundits as they got enraged about the state of the government, the failings of the current administration. He talked policy at parties and argued laws at bars. Shannon met him watching the 2004 presidential debates at a dive bar on the Lower East Side. Over Miller Lite drafts, he explained the details of the Swift-boating. Shannon nodded drunkenly and thought, “This guy is smart.” They stood outside and smoked cigarettes and talked about the ridiculousness of the last election. “It turned this country’s electoral system into a joke,” Dan said. And then Shannon kissed him.
Her friends approved. “I get it,” Lauren said. “He’s hot, in a nerdy, political way.”
“He’s nice,” Isabella said. “A little intense, maybe. But nice.”
Shannon didn’t care that he was intense. He was hers. Right after they met at the debates, they started dating and volunteering, urging people to get out and vote. For days before the election, they sat in the volunteer center and made phone calls until Shannon’s fingers felt numb from dialing. “I think we can do this,” Dan said. Shannon had never found someone so attractive in her life. They made out in a closet in the back of the volunteer center for ten minutes and then went back to their calls.
That night, they drank and watched as the Democratic candidate lost. “Four more years of this,” Dan said. “I don’t know if I can take it.” Shannon took his hand and held it in her lap. She wasn’t as upset as he was, but she tried to look like she was. “I’m so glad that I’m with someone who understands,” Dan said. Shannon just nodded.
Shannon and Dan moved in together and hosted dinner parties for their friends where political talk ruled the conversation and lively debate was encouraged. Dan sat at the head of the table and quoted articles he’d read, pulled out old New Yorkers to back up his point. He talked and lectured, raising his glass of wine when he made important points, as though he were their leader. Sometimes Dan almost crossed the line—like the time he called her friend Lauren ignorant, after she admitted that she’d voted for the Green Party candidate in 2000 because she’d felt bad