S hannon knew the first time she saw him. His voice was soft and smooth and luling, 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 stil 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 real y think?” Shannon asked. She rubbed the back of Dan’s neck. “It would take a lot for him to win.”
Dan final y turned away from the TV. He looked disappointed as he shook his head. “You’l see, Shannon,” he said. “Believe me, you’l see.”
Later, Shannon would tel 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 yel ed 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 Mil er 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,” Isabel a 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 cal s 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 cal s.
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, pul ed out old New Yorker s 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 cal ed her friend Lauren ignorant, after she admitted that she’d voted for the Green Party candidate in 2000 because she’d felt bad for him—but most of the time, the dinners were free of fighting and ful of wine, and Shannon was happy.
Dan worked in advertising, but his heart wasn’t in it. He sat around al day, writing catchy copy to accompany ads. “I want to do something that matters,” he always said. Shannon would nod in agreement. “I want a job I care about,” he would say, and Shannon would groan in sympathy. She thought it was just talk, just something people say to get through their day. But the more the young senator from Il inois showed up on TV, the more Dan talked about his discontent. He complained about his hours, his pay, his mindless duties. He slammed dresser drawers in the morning as he got ready for work, and drank a beer each night as he sulked in front of the news. And then one day he came home and announced that he was going to volunteer for the campaign.
“Do you have time to volunteer?” Shannon asked.
“The question is,” Dan answered, “how do I not make the time?”
Dan organized ral ies and trained volunteers. He went door-to-door making sure people were registered to vote. He skipped three days of work to attend a volunteer training camp in Chicago.
“I asked you last week if we could go on vacation, and you said you couldn’t take any days off,” Shannon said.
“This isn’t vacation,” Dan said. “This is our country.”
He came home from the volunteer camp with a graduation certificate and newfound energy. “This is it,” he kept saying. “This is the time.”
“The time for what?” Shannon muttered.
“What?” Dan said.
“Nothing,” she said.
At night, al they talked about was the election. Dan analyzed every word that came out of every candidate’s mouth. He sat no more than two feet from the TV, so that he wouldn’t miss a thing. “Did you hear that?” he asked, pointing at a face on TV. “Did you hear the tone she used when she said his name? Unbelievable.”
Shannon learned how to knit and sat on the couch twisting yarn into rows as Dan muttered to himself. “How can you knit at a time like this?” he asked her once. He looked at her like her yarn was the reason his Candidate was down in the pol s.
Dan pored over newspapers, websites, and right-wing blogs to see what the opposition was saying. When Shannon asked him if he wanted to go out to dinner, he just shook his head no. They ate takeout in front of the TV almost every night. More and more often, she found him asleep on the couch in the morning, his computer propped up next to him and CNN chattering in the background. He’d wake up and rub his eyes, then immediately focus on the latest news. “I can’t believe I missed this,” he’d say. He’d turn up the volume. “Shannon, can you move?” he’d ask. “I can’t see the TV.”
Dan applied for every job the campaign had. “How much does this one pay?” Shannon asked once.
“Does it matter?” Dan asked. “You don’t get this. I would do it for free.”
“It would be kind of hard to pay rent then, wouldn’t it?” Shannon asked.
Dan walked away from her and turned on the TV, to CNBC. Shannon fol owed him into the room, but he didn’t look at her. “I was kidding,” she said. “God, don’t be so sensitive.”
“This matters to me,” Dan said.
“I know,” she said. “It matters to me too.” Dan raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything more. Shannon sat down on the couch next to him and watched the wild-eyed political commentator scream. It was the blond man, the one who interrupted his guests and got on her nerves. “He spits when he gets excited,” she said. And then they watched the rest of the show in silence.