Boone Saxon was distracted, reading Jackie’s button. He said, “‘Kiss me — I’m a teacher’?”
“Yes,” said Jackie.
“Does that mean you’re a teacher?”
“Yes,” said Jackie. “I’m retired.”
Boone Saxon said, “Okay. Let’s see this list.”
Christopher walked around the van, looking through the windows at the carpet on the floor as Boone inspected Jackie’s action packet, turning several pages, flipping back. Satisfied, Boone gestured to the house.
A thin woman scurried down the steps, zipping a jacket. She climbed into the van and the agents stepped away. Peta backed down the driveway and headed into town.
The woman sat in back with Al and Bob Mangano. Leonard Nichols offered her a drink. The woman took a juice box, pierced it with the straw, and sucked thirstily. She was trembling.
“What was that all about?” Peta asked.
“I’m Belinda Johnson,” said the woman. “They’re questioning all Belinda Johnsons.”
They dropped the Belvedereans at the polls and went down Santasket Road, past the glittering new developments, Sandy Point and Breezy Ridge. The next group of likely voters lived in Grassy Knoll, the development past Breezy on the right. Grassy Knoll was the latest, best, and biggest retirement community in town, a mini-city of units and subunits, care levels ranging from affordable to posh. Peta drove past curving roads and maple groves and multiuse fitness paths, streams and little ponds ringed by tall grass and low willows, the homes and lawns and wild dales blending into greens and roughs and undulating fairways. Jackie didn’t even notice the golf course until they were in it, and Peta pointed out the cedar wheelchair ramp down into the sand trap.
“They’re making millions,” Peta said.
They collected Nadine Clanksy, a litigator’s widow from Cohasset, Massachusetts, who lived in a cookie-cutter cottage in a line of cottages facing a tricky little meadow, a par four.
“I never have to leave,” said Nadine Clansky, explaining why she’d moved. “Everything I need is here.”
“It’s incredible,” said Jackie.
“I’d like to live here now,” said Peta.
“Minimum age is sixty-five,” Nadine said, “and they enforce it strictly. Every so often, they’ll get some yuppie couple ready for the quiet life, trying to move in, pretending to be their own parents. Least that’s what I heard. It might be urban legend.”
“You have urban legends out here?” Peta asked.
“We have everything,” said Nadine. “Rock-climbing too. The golf course is the big draw, though. It won two awards.”
“Do you golf?” asked Jackie.
“No,” said Nadine. “You?”
“Tried it,” Jackie said. “Didn’t grab me.”
“Seems so boring,” Peta said. “Just seeing it on TV. Why is the announcer whispering?”
Nadine turned. “How ’bout you?”
The woman from The Truth said, “I’m sorry, what?”
They pulled up to the Big House, as Nadine called it, a fifteen-story cube of brown reflective glass.
“That’s full nursing,” said Nadine. “You don’t mind if I wait out here. That place gives me the creeps.”
Jackie, Peta, and the woman from The Truth went into a creamy lobby. A guard watched them through a break in the trees. They heard the sound of water falling but saw no waterfall.
Jackie took the bottom floors, looking for the three names. A woman, who polled as a strong supporter, had died over the weekend, and a man, another four, was having a nap and the nurses wouldn’t wake him. Jackie woke him anyway.
The man’s name was Arthur Freilinghuysen. “’Course I want to vote,” he said. “I haven’t missed a vote since Roosevelt in ’40. Help me find my pants.”
Jackie let Arthur Freilinghuysen dress. She went looking for the next name on her list, a Mr. Grosjean. She found him being fed his breakfast.
Jackie knocked. “Mr. Grosjean, I’m Jackie Kotteakis from the vice president’s campaign. Would you like to vote today?”
“He’s absentee,” said the orderly.
Jackie said, “He’s on the list. Mr. Grosjean, hello. Would you like to take a ride with me today?”
Peta walked the middle floors, looking for a voter named James Patrick Fagan. She stopped at a nursing station where a black man in a smock and stethoscope was picking through the pill drawer.
Peta said, “I’m looking for James Fagan. He’s a resident.”
The man gulped some pills and closed the drawer. “You got him.”
“You’re James Fagan?”
“All day long,” he said.
“Aren’t you a little young for a place like this?”
“That’s what I tried to tell my daughters,” James Fagan said. “They said, ‘Dad, you’re going through some changes. It’s not your fault, you’re getting older now.’ They got all worked up because once — once — they came to my house and I didn’t recognize them. They said I didn’t recognize them because I was getting older. Truth is, I didn’t recognize them because they were getting older. I remember my daughters blowing out the candles on their kiddie birthdays, going off to proms. These girls, my supposed daughters, were fat and gray and had those tiny spider veins. Of course, I didn’t say this, knowing how sensitive women are. Next thing I know I’m living in a cube. This is what I get for being nice. Let’s roll. I’ve got a chat-room date at noon.”
They rendezvoused in the lobby, Jackie with Arthur Freilinghuysen and Mr. Grosjean, Peta with James Fagan, the woman from The Truth with Mrs. Souza, the old piano teacher from C.E. They got the voters settled in the van, Nadine Clansky pushing over to make room.
Peta headed into town.
Arthur Freilinghuysen said, “Who’s running this year?”
“The VP,” Jackie said. “You support him.”
Arthur said, “I do?”
“That’s how they get your name,” James Fagan said.
“Well okay,” said Arthur, not too sure of this. “Is anyone else running?”
“Not really,” Peta said. “The VP is a solid choice.”
“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “I never trusted Tricky Dick.”
“He’s not running,” Jackie said.
“I never trusted any vice president, Humphrey, Agnew, Mondale, Bortlund.”
When they pulled up at the Gateway-to-the-Wetlands Nature Center with the second load of voters, Leonard Nichols was fuming in the rain, water running from the fangs of his mustache.
“Where’s the other fucking van?” he shouted at Jackie. “I been waiting half an hour. Is this your strategy? Get my vote and then it’s Leonard who?”
“At least you got a shower,” Peta said.
“I’ve been here before,” said Mrs. Souza, looking with suspicion at the nature center.
Peta often saw flocklike delegations from Grassy Knoll visiting the nature center under heavy chaperon. She said, “Yes, Mrs. Souza, the horseshoe crab exhibit’s really interesting. Can you get out, dear, or do you need a hand?”
“No, I mean I was here this morning,” Mrs. Souza said. “Some nice men in a van — they asked for my help.”
The voters from Grassy Knoll assembled on the curb, popping their umbrellas, everyone but Mrs. Souza, who had already voted for the senator, apparently. The woman from The Truth went around the back and helped Mr. Grosjean with his folding walker.
Leonard Nichols said, “Don’t vote for their lousy candidate. I did and look where it got me.”
Nadine Clanksy said, “I’m too old to walk home.”
Jackie said, “You won’t be stranded, Mrs. Clansky. We’ll wait for you, I promise. Now all of you get in there and do your civic duty.”