Reports flowed in during the day about what Pete Parkin was up to, which seemed to be much the same as Florentyna except that he was booked into the Westin Hotel at the Renaissance Center. As neither of them could go into the convention arena, their daily routines continued: delegates, phone calls, press statements, meetings with party officials and finally bed without much sleep.
On Thursday, Florentyna was dressed by six o’clock in the morning and was driven quickly to the convention hall. Once they had arrived at the Joe Louis Arena, she was shown the passage she would walk down to deliver her acceptance speech if she were the chosen candidate. She walked out onto the platform and stood in front of the banked microphones, staring out at the twenty-one thousand empty seats. The tall, thin placards that rose from the floor high into the air proudly proclaimed the name of every state from Alabama to Wyoming. She made a special note of where the Illinois delegation would be seated so that she could wave to them the moment she entered the hall.
An enterprising photographer who had slept under a seat in the convention hall all night began taking photographs of her before he was smartly ushered out of the hall by the Secret Service. Florentyna smiled as she looked toward the ceiling where twenty thousand red, white and blue balloons waited to cascade down on the victor. She had read somewhere that it had taken fifty college students, using bicycle pumps, one week to fill them with air.
‘Okay for testing, Senator Kane?’ said an impersonal voice from she could not tell where.
‘My fellow Americans, this is the greatest moment in my life and I intend to—’
‘That’s fine, Senator. Loud and clear,’ said the chief electrician as he walked up through the empty seats. Pete Parkin was scheduled to go through the same routine at seven o’clock.
Florentyna was driven back to her hotel, where she had breakfast with her closest staff, who were all nervous and laughed at each other’s jokes, however feeble, but fell silent whenever she spoke. They watched Pete Parkin doing his usual morning jog for the television crews; it made them all hysterical when someone in an NBC windbreaker holding a mini-camera accelerated past a breathless Vice President three times to get a better picture.
The roll call vote was due to start at nine that evening. Edward had set up fifty phone lines direct to every state chairman on the convention floor so that he could be in constant touch if something unexpected happened. Florentyna was seated behind a desk with only two phones, but at the single touch of a button she had access to any of the fifty lines. While the hall was beginning to fill they tested each line and Edward pronounced that they were ready for anything, that now all they could do was use every minute left to contact more delegates. By five-thirty that evening, Florentyna had spoken by phone or in person to 392 of them in four days.
By seven o’clock the Joe Louis Arena was almost packed, although there was still a full hour to go until the names were placed in nomination. No one who had traveled to Detroit wanted to miss one minute of the unfolding drama.
At seven-thirty Florentyna watched the party officials begin to take their seats on the stage and she remembered her days as a page at the Chicago convention when she had first met John Kennedy. She knew then that they had all been told to arrive at certain times; the later you were asked, the more senior you were. Forty years had passed, and she was hoping to be asked last.
The biggest cheer of the evening was reserved for Senator Bill Bradley, who had already announced he would address the convention if there was a deadlock after the first ballot. At seven forty-five, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Marty Lynch, rose and tried to bring the convention to order, but he could scarcely make himself heard above the klaxons, whistles, drums, bugles and cries of ‘Kane’ and ‘Parkin’ from supporters trying to outscream one another. Florentyna sat watching the scene but showed no sign of emotion. When finally there was a semblance of order, the chairman introduced Mrs. Bess Gardner, who had been chosen to record the votes, although everyone in the hall knew that the results would flash up onto the vast video screen above her head before she even had a chance to confirm them.
At eight o’clock the chairman brought his gavel down; some saw the little wooden hammer hit the base, but no one heard it. For another twenty minutes the noise continued as the chairman still made no impression on the delegates. Eventually at eight twenty-three Marty Lynch could be heard asking Rich Daley, the mayor of Chicago, to place the name of Senator Kane in nomination; ten more minutes of noise before the mayor was able to deliver his eulogy. Florentyna and her staff sat in silence through a speech that described her public record in the most glowing terms. She also listened attentively when Senator Ralph Brooks nominated Pete Parkin. The reception of both proposals by the delegates would have made a full symphony orchestra sound like a tin whistle. Nominations for Bill Bradley and the usual handful of predictable favorite sons followed in quick succession.
At nine o’clock, the chairman looked down into the body of the hall and called upon Alabama to cast its vote. Florentyna sat staring at the screen like a prisoner about to face trial by jury — wanting to know the verdict even before she had heard the evidence. The perspiring chairman of the Alabama delegation picked up his microphone and shouted, ‘The great state of Alabama, the heart of the South, casts 28 votes for Vice President Parkin and 17 votes for Senator Kane.’ Although everyone had known how Alabama was going to vote since March 11, over four months before, this didn’t stop Parkin posters from being waved frantically, and it was another twelve minutes before the chairman was able to call on Alaska.
‘Alaska, the forty-ninth state to join the Union, casts 7 of its votes for Senator Kane, the forty-second President of the United States, 3 for Pete Parkin and one for Senator Bradley.’ It was the turn of Florentyna’s followers to unloose a prolonged uproar in support of their candidate, but Parkin led the field for the first half hour until California declared 214 for Senator Kane, 92 for Parkin.
‘God bless Bella,’ said Florentyna, but had to watch the Vice President go back into the lead with the help of Florida, Georgia and Idaho. When they reached the state of Illinois the convention nearly came to a halt. Mrs. Kalamich, who had welcomed Florentyna that first night in Chicago nearly twenty years before, had been chosen as vice-chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party in the convention year to deliver the verdict of her delegates.
‘Mr. Chairman, this is the greatest moment of my life’ — Florentyna smiled as Mrs. Kalamich continued — ‘to say to you that the great state of Illinois is proud to cast every one of its 179 votes for its favorite daughter and the first woman President of the United States, Senator Florentyna Kane.’ The Kane supporters went berserk as she took the lead for the second time, but Florentyna knew her rival would create the same effect when the moment came for Texas to declare its allegiance, and in fact Parkin went ahead for a second time with 1,440 delegates to Florentyna’s 1,371 after his home state had given its verdict. Bill Bradley had picked up 97 delegates along the way and now looked certain to gather enough votes to preclude an outright winner on the first round.
As the chairman pressed forward with each state — Utah, Vermont, Virginia — the network computers were already flashing up on the screen that there would be no winner on the first ballot, but it was ten forty-seven before Tom Brokaw pronounced the first round verdict: 1,522 for Senator Kane, 1,480 for Vice President Parkin, 189 for Senator Bradley and 140 for favorite sons.