He whistled. “Whoa, Shannon. Calm down.” He put his BlackBerry down next to his plate and held up his hands in a fake surrender. “It’s away,” he said. “Okay?”
“No,” she said, holding out her hand. “Away, away. Give it to me. I’l keep it in my purse.”
“Shannon, come on. Don’t overreact.”
She kept her hand out. “I’m not overreacting. You’re not even e-mailing about work stuff, are you? You just miss your little campaign friends.”
Dan handed over the BlackBerry, but looked at Shannon with narrowed eyes. “You’ve real y got to figure out how to deal with your issues,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s total y the problem.”
The last night Dan was home, he wanted to go on a double date with his campaign friend Charlotte and her boyfriend, Chet. “Why?” Shannon kept
asking. “Why do we have to go out with them?”
“I want you to meet her,” Dan said. “I think you’l real y hit it off.”
“I kind of doubt it,” she said.
“Come on,” Dan said, and final y she agreed.
On the way downtown, Dan told Shannon that Charlotte and Chet were having some problems. “Chet’s not thril ed that Charlotte’s traveling so much,” he said. “He’s not taking the campaign too wel .”
“Who is?” she asked.
“Shannon.”
“What?”
He just shook his head.
They went to a tiny Mexican place in the West Vil age that served mango margaritas that tasted like candy. Dan and Shannon got there first, and stood at the bar drinking their margaritas. “Oh,” Dan said, “there they are!” He waved his hand up in the air and a tal blonde waved back.
Charlotte was almost six feet tal and very thin. She was the kind of person you don’t think is that pretty at first, but upon closer examination, you realize that she’s gorgeous. Her angular nose was striking and her long limbs were graceful. She could have been a model. When Shannon stood next to her, her head came right up to her boobs.
“Shannon, hi!” she said, and she surprised Shannon with a hug. Shannon’s face smooshed into Charlotte’s chest and she could barely breathe.
Final y she let Shannon go, but stil held on to her shoulders. “It is so nice to final y meet you.”
Shannon finished her margarita and shook the empty glass at Dan. “I’m ready for another one.”
They waited a long time for a table and got two more rounds of margaritas. Chet and Shannon drank while Charlotte and Dan talked about the people they worked with.
“And Kel y,” Charlotte said, rol ing her eyes. “Can you believe the way she sets up the events? I mean, putting the chairs in a semicircle? Where does she think she is?”
Dan doubled over with laughter and Chet and Shannon looked at each other. Shannon licked the salt off her glass. “Semicircles, huh?” she asked. “Crazy.” Dan stopped laughing and tilted his head at her. She smiled back.
By the time they sat down, Shannon could feel mango margaritas sloshing around in her stomach. The waiter put a basket of chips on the table and everyone grabbed for them. Charlotte took a handful and shoved them in her mouth. Then she started waving her hands around like, Wait, don’t talk! I’ve got a story to tell! Chet looked at her from the sides of his eyes, and Shannon wondered if he hated his girlfriend too. Charlotte swal owed her chips and wiped the grease off her lips. She took a sip of her drink and smiled.
“I forgot to tel you guys,” she said. “Last night, I had the most graphic, realistic, and extremely satisfying sex dream about the Candidate.”
“Wel , it looks like we know who the next Monica Lewinsky wil be,” Shannon said. She laughed and no one else did. Dan looked at her with his mouth open. “What?” she asked. “She can talk about the next president of the United States giving her an orgasm and I can’t make a Lewinsky joke?”
Charlotte looked down in pretend embarrassment. “Oh my God, ” Shannon said. “You brought it up. With your boyfriend sitting right there.”
Shannon meant to point at Chet, but he was closer than she thought and she ended up poking him on the cheek. He jumped in surprise. Shannon got the feeling he hadn’t been listening to anything they’d been saying.
They finished their enchiladas quietly, with pleasant, bland conversation. On the way home, Dan reprimanded Shannon. “I can’t believe you said that,” he told her. “Charlotte was pretty upset.”
“Oh, was she?” Shannon asked. “Do you think that Chet and I were upset that we went to dinner with our significant others that we never see and al they talked about was the random people they work with on the campaign? People that we don’t know and have never met. It was so boring. And it was rude.” Shannon’s eyes started to tear up and she sniffled. Dan let his shoulders drop.
“I’m sorry, Shannon,” he said. She shrugged and he grabbed her arm until she looked at him. “I mean it. I know this is hard for you and I real y appreciate your support. You know that, right? You know how much that means to me.” Shannon shrugged again and let him hug her.
“We shouldn’t have gone to dinner with them,” she said. “That’s not fair. You’re leaving tomorrow.”
“You’re right,” Dan agreed. “It should have just been us. Charlotte suggested it and I didn’t know what else to do. She’s having a hard time with Chet. I’m not sure they’re going to work it out. I feel real y bad for them.”
“Yeah,” Shannon said. “How sad for them.”
Shannon dreamt of the Candidate. She dreamt that they ran into each other at the grocery store and laughed about buying the same pasta sauce.
“You like Ragú too?” Shannon said to him, 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 al 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 tel 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.”