When Dan final y did cal , it was in the middle of the night and Shannon wasn’t sure if she was dreaming.
“I just wanted to say hi,” he said. He didn’t sound like he knew she’d almost put out an Amber Alert on him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just tired. I keep thinking they can’t do it again. They can’t steal another election from us.”
“That’s good,” Shannon said. She was stil half caught in sleep.
“They can’t take this away,” he said. “The Candidate deserves this. We need him. The country needs him.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Shannon said. “They can’t take it away,” she repeated.
“That’s right,” he said. “And if they do, we’re moving to Canada.”
One evening in early fal , Shannon walked the dog up Broadway with her friend Lauren. The air was starting to turn and the wind made Shannon shiver just a little. The two of them were deciding where to get a drink, and Shannon was trying to hurry the dog along, pul ing him past hydrants he wanted to sniff, when a smiling boy with a clipboard stepped in front of them. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you have a minute for the Democratic candidate?”
Lauren started to say something, but Shannon spoke first. “Do I have a minute for the Candidate?” she asked. The boy nodded and smiled and Shannon felt heat rush into her eyes. The dog sniffed the boy’s leg and stood very stil .
“Yes,” he said. “If you have just a minute for me, I can tel you about how you can help—”
“Do I have a minute for the Candidate? Do I? Have a minute? For the Candidate?” The boy nodded again, but now he looked nervous. “Let me tel you something,” Shannon said. “I have given the Candidate weeks—no, months—of my life. No, I don’t have a minute for him. You want to know why? My boyfriend has left to travel around with him. He quit his job to work for the campaign, and I haven’t seen him in a month. A month! I’m not sure if he’s ever coming back, and the thing is, he doesn’t even care! He doesn’t care because al he wants is to work on this godforsaken campaign that is just so important. More important than anything else, including me!”
The boy began to back away. “Okay, then,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t mean to what? Interrupt my walk? Stop me on a cold night and make me listen to you tel me how amazing this Candidate is? Yes, you did. And I’ve heard it. I hear it al the time. From my boyfriend, from everyone. I get it. He’s amazing.”
“Yes, he is,” the boy said quietly. Shannon narrowed her eyes. Lauren tried to pul her arm and make her walk away, but Shannon stayed right where she was.
“Why are you even here?” she asked.
“To inform people about the change we want to see in the world,” he said.
“No,” Shannon said. “Why are you here?” she pointed to the sidewalk. “Why are you in New York? You think you need to convince people here to vote for him? Let me give you a heads-up, buddy. He’s got New York, okay? We got it. We’re Democrats here. And you’re on the Upper West Side, of al places. For God’s sake. Don’t waste your time. Go somewhere else! It doesn’t even matter if I vote. I might not even bother. Did you hear that?
I might not vote!”
The boy kept walking backward and then turned and ran down the street, clutching his clipboard to his chest. He kept glancing back to see if Shannon was chasing after him. A few people stood on the sidewalk and stared, and Lauren took five steps to the right, trying to pretend that she didn’t know Shannon.
“Every vote counts,” an old lady said to Shannon. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Oh, fuck you,” she said. The dog hung his head. He looked embarrassed. Shannon started to walk down the sidewalk toward her apartment.
She walked quickly, and Lauren had to jog to keep up.
“Are you okay?” Lauren asked.
Shannon stopped. “Yeah. I guess maybe I’m not handling this whole thing as wel as I thought.”
“Real y?” Lauren said. “Do you think?”
“Whatever,” Shannon said.
“Hey, I get it,” Lauren said. “If you want to go back and push down that old lady, I’m al for it.”
“Maybe later,” Shannon said. “Drinks first.”
On Election Day, Shannon slept in. She got coffee and took her time walking to the public school where she would vote. Everyone at work would be late because of voting, and she might as wel take advantage of it. She at least deserved that much.
Shannon had butterflies in her stomach as she walked, but they weren’t from excitement. She’d been counting down to this day for months, and now that it was here she didn’t quite know how she felt about it.
As Shannon turned on Ninetieth, she saw that the line stretched al the way down the block. People were laughing and waving to their neighbors.
Moms from the school were sel ing baked goods and hot chocolate. “Al the proceeds are going to the school,” they kept saying. The group at the front was rowdy and slaphappy from standing in line for so long, and they started cheering as people came out of the building. “Whoo!” they yel ed.
“You made a difference! Good for you!”
Everyone was acting like this was some strange election-themed street fair. Shannon debated going back to bed and not voting at al . She could just tel everyone she had. What was the difference? In the end, she stayed put, but she put on her sunglasses and refused to smile at anyone around her.
Shannon saw a guy she knew from work walking down the line. “Hey!” he said to her. He held up his hand for a high five and Shannon gave him a
weak slap. “What a day, huh?” he asked. He turned his face to the sun and smiled. Like it was Christmas. Like there was a miracle to observe.
“Yep,” Shannon said. “What a day. Where did you come from? Were you in the front of the line?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I gave my place to an elderly lady. I told her I’d go to the back of the line, you know? It’s the least I can do.”
This wasn’t the New York that Shannon loved. These weren’t the people who normal y lived here. Everyone had gone crazy. Dan was gone and maybe he was never coming back. Shannon thought, as she waited in line, that she was crazy too, that she should have never waited for Dan in the first place. She should have made him choose: “Me or the Candidate,” she should have said.
Shannon thought this as she stood in line and as she voted. What had she done? Why had she chosen to stand by and support Dan as he’d left her? When she came out of the building, the group of people waiting to get in smiled and waited for Shannon to smile back. She didn’t. Final y, one of the women said, “I hope you made the right choice.” Shannon just looked at her and said, “Me too.”
That night, Shannon sat in a bar with her friends to watch the returns. Everyone was anxious, and they drank quickly. “So, our feeling is hopeful but cautious, right?” Mary said.
“Sure,” Shannon said. She was drinking faster than any of them. Vodka went down like water. No one real y noticed until she fel off her stool.
“Whoa,” Isabel a said. “Are you okay?”
“Maybe we need some chicken fingers,” Lauren said. She held up her hand for the bartender.
“She’s just real y excited,” Shannon heard Mary tel ing someone at the bar. “Her boyfriend’s been working on the campaign and now he’l final y come home.”
“He’s not coming home,” Shannon tried to say. But it didn’t come out right and no one seemed to understand her.
When the Candidate gave his speech that night, Shannon cried, of course. Everyone did. The whole bar watched in tears because it was amazing and inspiring and they were al relieved. But Shannon didn’t cry like the rest of them. She didn’t have little tears dripping out. No, Shannon had flared nostrils and she heaved and hyperventilated and her face turned red. It was the way she used to cry when she was little, when her mom used to say, “You need to calm down” and would send her upstairs to do just that. Shannon sat in the middle of everyone and cried like a red hog.