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I did not try to finesse it. "Governor," I said, "I was just on the phone with Libby. She says that Cashmere McLeod has tape recordings of you and her talking on the phone, and she's going to play them at a press conference tomorrow."

Susan hauled off and slapped hint right across the face. It was a perfect shot, a resonant sp/at--God, she was even good at that. His cheek flushed immediate pink, his chin dropped, his hand rose--not against her--but to massage himself. Neither of them said anything at first. She turned away, faced the plate-glass window, sun streaming in. Then he said, "I'm sorry."

"How bad?" she asked. Him? Me? I wasn't sure.

"Don't know," he said.

"Did you tell her you . . ." She looked over at me. "Henry, could you excuse us, please?"

Oh, absolutely.

We were sucked through the gauntlet into the television station, a howling of scorps restrained by rope lines. Everything was sharpness: bright, glary sun off the snow, darkness and stiletto winds in the shadow of the building. We came through the howling like a fighter and entourage--the governor and Susan, smiling and waving, followed by various advance and press people. I felt so protective, I just kept moving with them, staying as close as possible, adhering to them, through the greenroom, into the studio itself, where they were fitted with earpieces and planted side by side in front of several palms and a snowy slide of Manchester--a mixed metaphor, I thought. (It was the only idle thought I can recall about that morning.) So intent was I that I didn't realize I'd come a step too far, into the studio with them, and wouldn't be able to hear the questions as they were asked from
Washington. I would just sit there, behind the cameras, watching them, and try to pick up the question and questioner from facial expressions and responses. Surreal.

So it was:

"Good to be with you, David. . . . Yeah, it's cold, but these are friendly people up here, remind me a lot of home. . . . No, not really disruptive. I think if you came up and hung out with us for a day, you'd see that what the folks are really interested in is the future, what we're proposing to do about jobs and education and-"

A smile-an awful, empty, dead smile. "No, George, they just don't seem very interested in that sort of stuff. They just don't seem to see it that way. They're worried about their country and their kids. This election is about the future.

"Well, yes, I was against the war. But I never broke the law. I wasn't even officially arrested. . . .

"No way. No way. Down my part of the country, we respect the military. . . .

"Prudently, I would hope. But I would
. N
ot hesitate to use them." Another smile-wider, far too gawky. "Now, Sans, you're not really gonna dignify that trash, are you? I mean, you look at the rest of that paper: 'Space Aliens Ate My Credit Card'?" (Where did he get that line? It sounded like Richard.)

A harder look. "No, I'm not gonna dignify that-and Ins disappointed that at a time when the American people have an awful lot they're concerned about, and want to talk about, that we'd be distracted by-Sans, do you know how many mortgages are technically in default in New Hampshire at this very moment? Twenty-five percent."

An even harder look, a slight reddening. "No. It never happened. It's not true. Yes, we did. We did have some tough times in our marriage, but we worked our way through it." I realized they didn't look like they'd worked their way through it. They weren't touching. And just then, quietly, Susan slipped her hand in his.

He nodded. He was listening. "I don't think that would be fair, Coble."

And, suddenly, Susan jumped in: "You are making an assumption. You just don't know. I mean, Cokie-where have you been these pas
t t
wenty-five years? People have suffered and struggled and been through all sorts of crazy things. So yes, we did have some tough times. But we're still here. And if you want to draw a political lesson from that about Jack Stanton's character, it has nothing to do with inconsistency, or what was the word you used?" She almost laughed. "Untrustworthiness. It's the exact opposite: this man does not give up. He will work through the tough times. He will wake up every morning and bust his butt for the American people." That was an interesting calculation: a lot of the postgame chat would now be deflected from Cashmere McLeod to whether or not a prospective first lady should be borderline profane. (Of course she should, if a Democrat.)

But, I also realized that she had made the sharpest response of the show. She had the sound bite. She came off looking fine. He, on the other hand, was a runner-up for best supporting actor. When the lights went off, she dropped his hand as if it were a dead rat.

He strolled out humming a country tune, then singing it:

"Please, Mr please

Don't play B-17

It was our song, it was her song, But it's o-o-ver . ."

I rode three planes to Mammoth Falls, through the Sunday brightness. The first was a commuter to New York, filled with scorps, most of whom attempted to chat me up. Then, seeing it wouldn't get them anywhere, they snoozed or riffled through the Sunday Times. After that, I was free. I was anonymous, unrecognized for the first time in a month. I wandered the main terminal at La Guardia, browsed the bookstore, bought a volume of stories by Alice Munro. I flew to Cincinnati, a window seat. There weren't many passengers; it was light, and bright and airy. I felt as if I could breathe again. I read Alice Munro, sentence by sentence--reading for craft rather than plot, reading from a remove rather than diving in, wanting to keep perspective, wanting to appreciate something pristine, unhurried, carefully thought out. At the terminal in Cincinnati, I began to feel less free and more empty. There were families, parents and children, boarding planes; I watched the children. There was a middle-aged son, a decent-lookin
g m
an, pushing an older woman-his mother-in a wheelchair toward a gate. There were two priests, laughing. There was a group of large black kids-college kids, I could tell, enthusiastic, not sullen, but dressed sort of streety, cutting a wide, noisy swath through the terminal. (Even at our most hopeful best, we could still seem awkward, inappropriate, too emotive for these white folks, I feared.) But America seemed a happy place-happily oblivious of the tortured complications involved in the selection of its next president. This seemed amazing, and sane. There were basketball games on in the airport bars, people laughing and drinking beer surrounded by fluffy piles of down coats and overnight bags; soon the Super Bowl preview show would begin. It was, I suddenly realized, Super Sunday. I was invisible; no one noticed me. Well, there was one girl, Asian (Filipino?) or maybe Hispanic-we saw each other, and nodded, and went on. I called around, waiting for the plane. I couldn't find Richard or Daisy. I called the suite and got Lucille. "Wasn't Susan just fantastic?" she asked. "Everyone is saying that."

It was late afternoon when I boarded
. T
he next plane, also mostly empty, for Mammoth Falls. It was dark when I landed, but there was a warns breeze blowing up from the Gulf.

Olivia Holden had settled into a small, charming white clapboard house on a quiet street north of the capitol. The living room had a couch and a large console TV, but it was filled with files as well, and an L-shaped table with a computer and printer and fax machine along the back and side wall, away from the picture window. There was a microfilm viewer, and Peter Goldsmith was hunched over it, rolling old Mammoth Falls Gazettes, stopping, taking notes. He looked up, said hi. Jennifer peered out from the kitchen, "Hey!" she said, "want some tea?"

"HENREEEEEE." Olivia, out from a bedroom she'd made into an office. "Gotta get movin', gotta move our butts-word o' the day, since Susie popularized it-gotta head south, get to Sailor's, and watch 01' Cashmere spill her soul and shed her tears with an expert." She put on her outback hat and her vest and threw an arm around Jennifer and-I could have fallen over-gave her a long, soulful kis
s o
n the mouth. Jennifer smiled at me, blushed a little, shrugged. "You take care of yourself now, dear," Libby said softly, tenderly, in a voice I hadn't heard before. "I'll be home for dinner."

Olivia drove-it was a red Jeep Cherokee-and didn't speak. She had the radio on, public radio, Brahms Symphony No. 4. I tried to engage her: "So you met Jack and Susan in Florida, working for McGovern?"

"Yep."

"What were they like?"

"Glorious. Golden, golden."

"They came down together?"

"Henry, don't you have any respect for the music?"

We took the interstate south of town, then a two-laner west, into the hills, piney-woods country, then a left onto a dirt road. The symphony over, Libby briefed: "Salem `Sailorman' Shoreson. Old friend of the familyiumped bail, went to Canada. It wasn't much-a disorderly, destruction of property, during the Days of Rage. He was really running from the draft. Came back in '77, Carterized. Still had to do a little time up north for jumping bail, but it was country-club time." "Friend of the family?"

"Grace Junction. Knew Jackie since elementary school, would stop a bullet for him. Maybe two."

"So what does he do?"

"Electronics-obviously. Henry, do I have to walk you through every fucking thing?"

There was a cinder-block wall in the forest, whitewashed, with concertina wire on top, small cameras mounted on top of the wall, an ornate wrought-iron gate. Libby stopped the car, rolled down the window; a speaker box rose up from the ground. "Whut you (newt, Miss Scarlett?" said the speaker box: Butterfly McQueen, Gone With the Wind.

"Telegram for Leon Trotsky, you DIMWIT," Libby said.

The gates swung open, and there was music, a perfect sound system, sound coming from everywhere-the Stones: "Let's Spend the Night Together." We proceeded up a circular drive to a large hunting-lodge-style cabin. Sailorman was waiting for us there-blue jeans and work shirt, round, bald, long unkempt beard, a kindly face.

"Greetings, Olivia," he said-a squeaky voice that didn't go with the rest of him.

"Sailorman, your country needs you."

"Ready to roll, honey," he said. "How was the booby hatch?"

"A better class of drugs than the old days," Olivia said. "Not ups or downs-eveners-out. I am eeeeeeee-ven now."

"Sure, you are," he laughed. She belly-laughed, slapped him on the back.

Sailor had quite a setup. Wall-to-wall dials and screens and gizmos. It looked sort of like a cross between a radio station and a recording studio-he produced some bluegrass bands there, just for fun, he said. There was a big screen TV amid multiple monitors, and we settled in to watch the Cashmere McLeod Show on CNN.

It was a zoo, for starters. They had set up the press conference in a New York hotel ballroom-and there must have been rwo hundred reporters there. Forty camera crews. I had been feeling free, if a bit weird, with Libby, but now the awful, claustrophobic New Hampshire mania was back.

Then, Cashmere: a puffy, chunky, bulldoggy woman-curly dark hair, not long; breasts, but no waist; and legs, abruptly short but shapely-she seemed intermittently alluring, sexy in sections. Sometimes you can look at a person and can see who they were when they were young-their schoolyard selves; there are others who carry with them a premonition of age. Cashmere was like that: you could see where she was headed. It was not a pleasant sight. She was wearing a black suit, white blouse, far too much makeup. She had a lawyer, bearded, double-breasted-he might have been a member of the local Playboy Club in the old days. She had a tiny little voice.

"Governor Jack Stanton see-dyou-ced me," she said, to an aurora of clicks and flashes.

Libby hooted.

"Judy Holliday," Sailorman said.

"And I can prove it," Cashmere said. "I have tapes."

There was a gasp and bedlam. The lawyer took the podium: "Miss McLeod will not be taking questions," he said. "This will not be an inquisition."

"Right," I said, "we get the inquisition."

It soon became clear that Cashmere's role was to stand there and daub at her mascara. The lawyer was running the show. "The tapes were recorded, on Miss Mcleod's phone machine, over an eighteen-month period," he said. "The last recording was made in November, just before Thanksgiving. I will play a portion of it now."

And you could here a crackly, distant Jack Stanton--and a very clear Cashmere McLeod.

JACK: We're going to have to cut [crackle, mmmf] this off for now. CASH: But you said you loved me.

JACK: I just have to be careful, honey. Anyway, I'm spending almost all my time in New Hampshire now.

CASH: But you said no one could do the things I did to you. I could come up there.

"God, what a whiny bitch," Libby said. "Shhhh," Sailorrnan said.

JACK: When this is over, we'll get together.

CASH: Remember that time you had me meet you in Dallas. Ahhh, I get hot just thinkin' about it.

JACK: I've got to go.

It was shocking. I was shocked. It was his voice. Libby turned to Sailorman. "Well?"

"Can't say for sure. I'd have to see the tape. But it sounds real. Maybe one or two splices. But who knows? I'm hearing it thirdhand." "I'm gonna kill him," Libby said. "How could he be so DUMB?" The lawyer was holding up another tape. "This is one from last summer," he said.