When Dan quit his job, Shannon was supportive. “It wil be hard,” she said. “But if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.” She was pretty sure she meant what she said.
“I’l be traveling a lot,” Dan said. “But it’s what I always wanted to do.”
“Of course,” Shannon said. She didn’t real y know what she was agreeing to, but her answer made Dan happy.
Later, Shannon explained it to her friends. “It’s too good to pass up,” she said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Wel , you knew this about him when you met him,” Mary said. “I guess this doesn’t come as a huge surprise.”
“It just sucks for you,” Lauren said.
“Yep,” Shannon said. “Yep, it real y does.”
At first, Shannon stil saw Dan about once a week. Then his trips started to overlap with each other and he didn’t seem to have time to come home in between. Soon, he was flying from stop to stop with barely enough time to cal her and tel her where he was going. Shannon realized that if she wanted to see him, she’d have to go to him. And that’s what she did.
Shannon shivered in New Hampshire while Dan arranged an outdoor ral y. She attended a fund-raiser in Chicago and then took a bus to Iowa and painted campaign signs in a high school, while a snowstorm raged outside and Dan worried that the old people wouldn’t be able to drive to the school. Shannon painted poster boards red, white, and blue. She painted the Candidate’s name in fancy block letters, and made signs that said
“Davenport for Change.” She painted “Hope” over and over again, so many times that the letters started to look funny and the word lost its meaning.
Shannon went to Boston and fol owed Dan around to three different events in one day. She shook hands with the Candidate and nearly blacked out from excitement. She listened to him give the same speech over and over and she cried every time. He talked about the hardships people have to face, and he talked about wanting a better world for his children, and Shannon clapped and cried.
Shannon shouted that she was “fired up and ready to go” in seven different states. She passed out buttons and helped set up chairs. And sometimes, when she went to bed at night, she heard ral y cries in her head, soft and far away. They sounded so real that she was sure there were people gathered outside her apartment, huddled together, chanting the Candidate’s name as she tried to fal asleep.
Dan returned to New York for an event and Shannon recruited al of her friends to come. They waited in line at Washington Square Park for three hours, getting crushed by the crowd. “Dan wil be so happy that you came,” Shannon told them.
“Where is he?” Lauren asked.
“Up there.” Shannon pointed to the stage. Dan darted by.
“That’s fun that you got to see him last night,” Isabel a said.
“Oh, wel , I actual y didn’t,” Shannon said. “He ended up working al night. He slept here.”
“In the park?” Mary asked. “Gross.”
“Tonight, maybe?” Isabel a asked.
Shannon shook her head. “He’s off to Pennsylvania,” she said. The girls were quiet for a minute.
“Wel ,” Lauren said. “It wil be over soon, right?” Shannon started to agree, but the music came on and they al turned to the stage, and clapped and cheered.
As the primaries got closer, Dan traveled so much that Shannon didn’t even have time to go see him. He’d be in a city for twenty hours and then on his way to the next one. Even phone cal s became rare. Sometimes, though, she caught a glimpse of his head on the border of the TV, running from side to side in a gymnasium after the Candidate finished a speech. She watched for him closely, waiting for his blond head to flash on the screen.
“There he is,” she’d cry, although no one was there to hear her. And then as soon as she spotted him, he’d run off the other side, gone from her
sight.
When the Candidate won Iowa, Dan cal ed from the campaign center. He sounded muffled and far away. Shannon could hear screaming in the background and Dan had to yel to be heard. His voice was thick, as though he’d been crying or was just about to start.
When Dan did come home, he was exhausted and wrinkled. Sometimes, he’d been up for days. His hair stood up in clumps and his eyes were bloodshot. He’d come into the apartment, shower, and head straight for bed.
Shannon talked to him while he slept. She told him about her job while his eyes stayed closed. “Mmm-hmm,” he’d murmur sometimes.
Dan wore two BlackBerrys, strapped to either side of his belt. “You look like a nerd,” Shannon always told him. He didn’t care. Once when Dan was home and lying in bed, Shanon saw a red mark on his hip. “What’s that?” she asked. She touched it lightly.
“It’s from the BlackBerry, I think,” Dan said.
“You have a scar from your BlackBerry vibrating against you?” Shannon asked.
“I guess so,” Dan said.
“And that doesn’t strike you as strange? As not right?”
“Not real y,” Dan said. He rol ed over and turned out his bedside light.
“You’ve been branded,” Shannon said. But Dan was already asleep.
Every time Dan got ready to leave again, they fought.
“When wil you be home?” Shannon would ask.
“You know I don’t know that,” he’d say.
“Do you even miss me?” she’d ask.
“Shannon,” he’d say. “Don’t start this now. You know I miss you. Don’t fight with me right before I leave.”
Sometimes she let it drop, but sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she’d poke and whine until they fought. It felt good to scream at him, to scream at someone. Once she asked him, “Let’s say that you got to have dinner with one person and you had to choose: me or the Candidate. And you hadn’t seen me in a month. Who would you pick?”
“You, of course,” he said. He came over and kissed her good-bye. It was a lie. She knew deep inside that she was his second choice. Always.
He’d fal en for someone new. And infatuation was winning.
Once after he left, the dog jumped onto the bed, lifted his leg, and peed. Shannon didn’t even yel at him. “I understand,” she said to the dog as she stripped the sheets. “It’s a shitty situation.”
As months went by, Shannon forgot what it was like to live with Dan. Some nights she convinced herself that he was gone for good. If he did leave, she decided, she would take his TV.
Her friends were worried about her. They took her to brunch and brought over wine. “How are you doing?” they asked.
“Good, good,” Shannon always said. What was she supposed to say? That Dan would rather campaign in Texas than spend time with her? That she’d been abandoned? That the Candidate had stolen her boyfriend? It was easier to just say, “I’m doing great.”
“You’re such a good sport,” they’d say.
Shannon drank the wine and agreed. “Yep, that’s me.” It was better, she thought, than the truth.
At the end of August, Dan got four days off from the campaign. Shannon thought they’d have al sorts of time together, but when he was in the apartment, al he did was e-mail with his campaign friends. He was constantly looking at his BlackBerry. They went to dinner, and Dan remained hunched over, his fingers clicking away. Sometimes he’d laugh at a response he got, or nod in agreement.
“Don’t your fingers hurt?” Shannon asked him. He looked up, surprised.
“No,” he said. “They’re fine.”
“Do you think you could put that away for twenty minutes while we eat, so that I could actual y talk to you while we’re in the same city for once?”