“I only get to be Congressman if enough of your family votes for me,” I told her.
“Uncle Nick will get you in. Just keep coming around for lunch when you’re here,” she replied.
“That’s a campaign promise I can keep, for sure.”
Anastasia gave us our menus and gave us a few minutes to look at them. I went with one of my favorites, a Reuben and a chocolate shake. After she took our order, Big Bob said, “So this is where you had that fight?”
I nodded. “Yeah, right over there.” I pointed towards the entrance and cash register. “The one girl was in that booth, and Nick and Amy, the waitress who got clobbered, were over there. You guys saw that on the news?”
“We saw it. We weren’t sure we liked seeing you on the news that way.” He glanced over at his wife, and Harriet just shrugged her massive shoulders.
“It wasn’t my idea. I couldn’t let him just keep beating people up, though, could I?”
Marilyn came to my defense. “Let’s face it. I married a hero!” She leaned over and kissed my cheek, and I blushed.
“You know, if Nick really does get his family to vote for me, I’m a shoo-in, but I’ll have to keep eating a lot of meals here.”
After lunch, we drove over to Hereford and I showed the Lefleurs around the office. We had expanded even more since the last time they were around, and now we had the entire office building in the office park. (There were still three other buildings around us.) We had moved some of the legal and accounting functions upstairs, and left the traders and partners downstairs. After that, we drove to the high school and voted. It was rather strange to see my name on the voting machine, but I pulled the little lever and smiled. Then we went home and rescued the sitter.
Over dinner Charlie asked, “Are we going to have to move if you win?” The girls were still a little young to understand about the election, and only pointed out when Daddy was on the television, but Charlie was a bright little shit! He had learned about some of this stuff in school already.
“I wasn’t planning to. Why?”
“Well, won’t you have to go to Washington? Isn’t that, like, really far away?”
I nodded in understanding. “Ah, well, it’s not that far away. It’s a couple of hours by car. Maybe I’ll have to get a girlfriend down there and stay at her place when I’m in Washington.” I winked at Marilyn’s parents as I said this.
Charlie started laughing. Marilyn fell into the trap, though, and started hooting and hollering! “There’s not going to be any girlfriends! You’ll be coming home!” She kept going like this for another minute, and even the Lefleurs were laughing at her. She then did the usual finger wag and said, “You think you’re so smart! See if I ever vote for you again.”
“You told me you were voting Democrat, that way we’d cancel each other out.”
“Smartass!”
“Better than being a dumbass,” I responded.
“With you, they’re the same thing!”
Holly and Molly were laughing at their mother now, too. I just sat there and smiled.
The polls were going to close at eight, and we wanted to be at the campaign reception before then. We had rented the Westminster Best Western, which was about the biggest banquet hall in the area. Anything bigger was down inside the Beltway, probably. We had a podium set up at one end of the room with a few flags behind it, and space for cameras and reporters in front of it. I figured we would get a few of each, considering the colossal nonsense we had gone through with this campaign! Oh, and the free drinks for the reporters wouldn’t hurt, either. Everybody else simply got tickets for two free drinks, after which they had to buy their own.
We got there around half past seven, and found the place surprisingly filled. It was more than just the campaign volunteers, too. My partners at the Buckman Group were there, along with the Destriers and Jack Nerstein. Brewster McRiley was running around, nervous as all get-out, and driving people nuts.
I finally grabbed him and pulled him out of the room. “Brew, you’re going crazy. Now settle down before we tie you into a chair.” I led the way to the suite we had booked as our little headquarters. The powers that be followed along.
“But there’s so much to do,” he protested.
“No, Brewster, there isn’t. It’s all over by now, except for the counting. There’s nothing left to do except give a speech and have a party.” I pushed him towards an armchair and pushed him down into it. “Now, stay there. Do you have a girlfriend? Do I need to have her sit on you to keep you in place?”
He smiled at me. “No, no girlfriend.”
“A boyfriend then?”
His eyes popped open. “Jesus, NO!” I just smiled at him until he realized I was goofing on him. “Marilyn’s right, you really are a son of a bitch!”
“There you go. Now calm down and relax. Have fun and say thank you to all the volunteers. Either we win and I give a victory speech and we have a party, or I lose and I give a concession speech, and we all get drunk and cry. It’s what us mathematicians call a binary outcome, a zero sum game. I will let you stand up if you promise to go find a beer and have a drink.”
Brew rolled his eyes but promised, and I laughed as I sent him out. John and Jack Nerstein came in with some Solo cups and a bucket of ice, and a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of Sprite. We poured ourselves a round of drinks. “Mud in your eyes, gentlemen!” Jack said.
“Down the hatch!” I agreed.
“Skoal!” said John. He drank some, and then asked, “You ready for this?”
“It’s too late to back out now.” I had another swallow. “I don’t know which scares me more, losing and having to face people afterwards, or winning and actually having to be a Congressman! What in the fuck do I actually know about being a Congressman!?”
“Well, you can’t be any worse than Stewart, and maybe we get some good out of you,” answered Nerstein with a smile.
“Boy, there’s a rousing campaign slogan — ‘He can’t do any worse than the current asshole!’ Remind me not to have you involved in my next campaign.” Both men laughed at that.
We had a couple of televisions around the place, one out in the big room and another in the suite’s bedroom. One was tuned to WMAR and the other to WJZ. At eight, Marilyn and Helen Steiner came in, along with Brew and Missy, and we started watching. All they said at eight was that the polls were closing. They didn’t offer any predictions based on exit polls yet. We all had a round of drinks. Helen asked, “What are you going to do with the campaign headquarters?”
I shrugged. “If I lose, we clean out and I slink off home and cry. If I win, though, I was thinking of just buying it. We can make part of it my local district office, and leave the other part for storage and future campaigns. Ask me again tomorrow.”
“I’ll ask you again, tonight!”
We were running a war room in a corner of the main room, with a couple of phones set up. At about a quarter after eight, we started getting calls from various precincts around the district, and they started writing totals on a blackboard. We had a lead at the start, but when the total is less than one percent of the vote, it’s meaningless. By nine, however, the lead was pretty significant. There were approximately 210,000 votes that would likely be cast in the election, and the running total was 19,571 for me and 17,223 for Stewart. The television stations still weren’t calling it, though.
I was too keyed up to think. I made myself another drink, and Marilyn followed me, and I made her one as well. “You need to calm down.” She pushed me down on the couch and then sat down next to me. People came in and out, and every once in a while somebody would let out a whoop as another precinct was phoned in.