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By Root 422 0

and they laughed and clutched arms. She dreamt that he came over for dinner and she told him how he was making her life so hard. He smiled. He shook her hand. He talked about hope and belief and getting fired up! Shannon awoke from these dreams feeling exhausted and confused, until she noticed that she’d left the TV on CNN. They were showing a tape of the Candidate at some campaign stop. He was smiling and frowning, laughing and tilting his head to show concern. Shannon looked at him closely while he talked and gestured. Did he know? Did he know that he had stolen her boyfriend? Did he know that he was ruining her whole life plan? Did he know that he was making her miserable?

He finished the speech and a Stevie Wonder song came blaring out of the speakers. He clapped his hands toward the audience, gave a serious look, and then smiled and went to shake hands. He swayed his shoulders and hips to the song. She decided that the answer was no. He didn’t know any of it.

Everyone asked about Dan; people at work, friends, family, even the neighbors wanted to know what he was up to. “How’s he doing?” they would ask. “How’s the feeling on the campaign? Do we have this one wrapped up?”

Shannon knew they were all nervous. They were scared that they’d wind up with an old man and a crazy-booted gun lover in the White House. “It’s going great,” she would tell them. “Everyone’s feeling positive.”

“But what about this Muslim rumor?” they would insist. “Do you think we can shake this? What about the flag pin?” they asked. Shannon looked at their wrinkled eyebrows and tried to reassure them, but she barely had anything left.

As the election went on, the rumors got nasty. People tried to paint the Candidate as anti-American, finding incriminating old footage of a reverend he knew, and playing it on what seemed like a twenty-four-hour loop. When this news broke, Shannon didn’t talk to Dan for a week. He was jumping from event to event, trying to make people forget they’d ever heard the words “God damn America.”

When Dan finally did call, it was in the middle of the night and Shannon wasn’t sure if she was dreaming.

“I just wanted to say hi,” he said. He didn’t sound like he knew she’d almost put out an Amber Alert on him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just tired. I keep thinking they can’t do it again. They can’t steal another election from us.”

“That’s good,” Shannon said. She was still half caught in sleep.

“They can’t take this away,” he said. “The Candidate deserves this. We need him. The country needs him.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Shannon said. “They can’t take it away,” she repeated.

“That’s right,” he said. “And if they do, we’re moving to Canada.”

One evening in early fall, Shannon walked the dog up Broadway with her friend Lauren. The air was starting to turn and the wind made Shannon shiver just a little. The two of them were deciding where to get a drink, and Shannon was trying to hurry the dog along, pulling him past hydrants he wanted to sniff, when a smiling boy with a clipboard stepped in front of them. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you have a minute for the Democratic candidate?”

Lauren started to say something, but Shannon spoke first. “Do I have a minute for the Candidate?” she asked. The boy nodded and smiled and Shannon felt heat rush into her eyes. The dog sniffed the boy’s leg and stood very still.

“Yes,” he said. “If you have just a minute for me, I can tell you about how you can help—”

“Do I have a minute for the Candidate? Do I? Have a minute? For the Candidate?” The boy nodded again, but now he looked nervous. “Let me tell you something,” Shannon said. “I have given the Candidate weeks—no, months—of my life. No, I don’t have a minute for him. You want to know why? My boyfriend has left to travel around with him. He quit his job to work for the campaign, and I haven’t seen him in a month. A month! I’m not sure if he’s ever coming back, and the thing is, he doesn’t even care! He doesn’t care because all he wants is to work on this godforsaken campaign that is just so important. More important than