Golden Age

1992

RICHIE WOULD NOT have said that he had many political opinions, but once the Dems put him in the race for Congressman Scheuer’s seat, his mouth opened, and opinions came out. They were, he discovered, quite similar to the congressman’s own opinions, and not that much different from Ivy’s. In fact, they were pretty much standard opinions for someone living in Brooklyn (fortunately, his and Ivy’s co-op was just inside the line separating his district from the next one over), but he realized as he enunciated them that he actually felt them — his voice warmed to them, shaped them, emphasized them. When he spoke, images came into his mind of Ivy and Leo and their neighborhood, and how they fit into the larger picture (or, indeed, sometimes how the larger picture fit into them), and he waxed profound. It was true, though, that he didn’t want anyone in his family — certainly not Michael, but not Ivy or his mom, either — to come to rallies. He was convinced that if he saw them in the audience he would return to the shapeless being he had been before Leo was born, the same being he was only now emerging from.

He was thirty-nine, he was tall, he was friendly from all those years of showing properties, he had a good smile. He was called “Rick.” He was “the son of war hero and self-made defense industry innovator Frank Langdon,” and in this day and age Michael wasn’t as much of a liability as he might have been — their relationship appealed to some of Richie’s voters in the Manhattan portions of the district. Richie had connections to the Italian community and through Ivy and her parents to the Jewish community. Once he started purveying these advantages, he was rather amazed at how it had all come together without his realizing it. And then there was Loretta, an avid supporter of Bush. She was a little prominent around certain parts of the city now, though still registered to vote in California; she was so eccentric that Richie knew that, if anyone brought her name up, all he had to do was smile and very slightly roll his eyes and he would get the I-have-crazy-relatives-too vote, hands down. The political landscape seemed to be changing — to be smoothing out almost everywhere. And Richie had more energy now than he had ever had before. It was in this that he knew that he really was related to that kid Charlie Wickett, who occasionally stopped by campaign headquarters on his daily run between Fort Tryon Park and Sag Harbor, or something as insanely breathtaking. Richie liked Charlie, and threatened to put him to work distributing leaflets. Charlie said that he was only allowed to distribute leaflets about the greenhouse effect, but Richie didn’t pay any attention to that — he just liked to see him. And, of course, he knew Charlie’s looks, fitness, and good-natured out-to-lunch quality would appeal to the youth vote.

Ivy was almost proud of him; she let him know this by telling him that her parents had decided that he was a “late bloomer.” They, of course, assumed that the blossom had a pinkish tinge (they continued to pay for his subscriptions to The Nation and Mother Jones and to refer to Herbert Marcuse and Raymond Williams), but Richie thought maybe those days were gone. Both sides had so sullied their reputations that what he had — a kind of get-it-done-and-shake-hands-across-the-aisle sort of openness — was the wave of the future. His Republican opponent was an obvious sacrifice, fifty-four, with the forgettable name of Kevin Moore; he had run against Congressman Scheuer twice, losing by twenty points and then twenty-four points. The Republicans had pretty much already conceded.

By early February, Richie hadn’t actually answered when people (people from the Times, the Post, the Village Voice, the Key Food weekly circular) asked him what he thought of the presidential race — Wilder, Kerrey, Clinton, Tsongas, Harkin, Brown — Virginia, Nebraska, Arkansas, Iowa, California, with a tragicomic touch of Massachusetts in Tsongas. He said nothing. They all had their advantages; the main thing was to pick the one who best combined intelligence, decisiveness, compassion, and the will to win. When Gennifer Flowers had appeared on the scene, he’d kept a straight face and said, “We should wait and see what’s really going on.” When everyone started talking about Clinton’s dodging the draft, Richie told his own story, about showing up to enlist in Boston, ending up on a bus full of antiwar activists, and having to wait and try to enlist again, but by then the war was over. This was a story that even Ivy had never heard — how Debbie had found him wandering around Boston, wondering what to do. He was so stupid that he’d thought he would sign up, they’d take him, and he wouldn’t have to come up with bus fare home, so he spent his last dollar on, not anything manly like a pack of smokes, but an ice-cream cone. Ivy thought it was cute and funny, so Richie learned how to tell it in a way that promoted an image of self-effacing patriotism combined with subsequent moral and practical growth.

Richie watched all the presidential candidates — not to see what they thought, but more to observe how they presented themselves. From Clinton, he took sheer brazen forward motion; from Harkin, the habit of smiling just before saying something; from Brown, an air of contained impatience at the bullshit presented by the other side; from Wilder, a trick of dropping into seriousness just at the right moment — the joking is over, let me lead you into a discussion of the issues. From all of them he took a willingness to speak to any size crowd. At the end of February, he was asked to a breakfast group at Lefferts Historic House. His audience numbered three persons, including the one who had arranged the breakfast; she apologized profusely for forgetting to put it in the paper. Richie spoke earnestly and at length, as if he had a full house. The only truly awkward part was the question-and-answer period — dead silence. But he kept smiling.

People in his neighborhood began recognizing him. As the winter progressed into spring, they went from staring at him just a moment too long to saying, “Are you that guy, Rick Langdon? I saw your picture somewhere,” to “You know, I heard what you said, and here’s where you’re wrong.” It was both an advantage and a disadvantage that Leo’s absolute favorite thing to do was to go for a walk in the park; on Saturdays and Sundays, when Allie, their nanny, was off, Richie would carry him across Prospect Park West to the entrance at the end of Ninth Street, and as soon as they neared the Lafayette Memorial, Leo would start bouncing in Richie’s arms, and then hit the ground running. The disadvantage was that everyone in the park recognized him, and most people had something to say. The advantage was that Leo had to be followed, because he wouldn’t stand still or allow himself to be held, and almost all of Richie’s interlocutors were left behind, while at the same time, Richie hoped, noting that the candidate was a responsible and involved father. He knew he could not let Leo (1) throw a tantrum, (2) appear to be in danger, or (3) eat dangerous (carrots) or suspect (Popsicles) foods. All in all, it was better to let the darling child go, staying right with him. In March, there was even a little squib on Page Six—“Eighteen-Month-Old Beats Candidate Dad by a Length,” with a very cute picture of Leo running and laughing, Richie right behind him, also laughing. Richie had expected the fund-raising and the meetings with constituents to be arduous, and the campaign to be time-consuming, but in fact the people funding his campaign were satisfied by his relationship to and near-identification with Congressman Scheuer, whom everybody liked.

Michael called this “the machine at work,” but Richie had never enjoyed anything so much in his life.

—

ANDY DIDN’T KNOW anyone as open and free with her opinions as Loretta. Just now, sitting across from her in the BG Restaurant on the seventh floor at Bergdorf’s, Loretta had remarked that, as much as she loved Ivy, she knew in her heart that Ivy was more loyal to Israel than to the United States. When Andy responded that never, ever had she heard Ivy or her entirely nonreligious parents say anything of the sort, Loretta shrugged, took a sip of her oolong tea and a bite of her scone (it was four in the afternoon, and they had spent the whole day shopping), and said, “Well, wait till push comes to shove. It’s inside all of them.” But the other side of this sort of statement was the reason they were there. Loretta had called her up two weeks before (apparently after having her hair done) and said, “Andy, I look like hell, and I need you.” For two weeks now, Loretta had been mining her for the two types of ore everyone knew Andy could produce — fashion advice and AA advice, one for herself and the other for Michael.

Frank had said, “So which will be the more difficult task?” but Andy didn’t think like that — they asked, you answered, Fate unfolded.

Loretta was too short for the loose, boyish pastel suits they were featuring, but at least huge shoulder pads were out now. She looked reasonably good in shaped, not-quite-clingy dresses. She’d tried on the green sleeveless, which brought out her eyes; the black capped-sleeve; and a nice violet item with something unusual, an asymmetric hemline. She had good ankles and feet — they’d spent a fair amount of time in the shoe department. The nicest thing she’d bought was for parties: an elaborately embroidered, rather stiff, square-necked gold sheath with a smallish waist that stopped just above knee-length, expensive and flattering.

The most salient fact was that Binky would be in first grade in the fall; no doubt, over the last six years, many opportunities to conceive a fourth child had occurred and not been utilized, and so Loretta (thirty-eight?) must have accepted that that phase was over. And, of course, Michael had changed in the last year. In the same relentless way he had formerly pursued his selfish desires for sensation (speed, money, oblivion, independence), he now pursued the amazing new goal of family happiness. Andy and Frank were invited to their place on Madison and Eighty-fourth (two floors, four bedrooms) every other Sunday for Sunday supper — not a fake event. Loretta served (and cooked herself) prime rib, roast chicken, braised leeks, potatoes au gratin. Michael sat at the head of the table, Loretta stood at the foot of the table (she did the carving), and both of them pestered the life out of Chance, Tia, and Binky. Chance paid no attention, Tia enjoyed answering questions, and Binky was passively resistant. It was evident to Andy, and, she thought, to Loretta, that Michael was making up fatherhood out of whole cloth.

Now Loretta looked at the little pyramid of treats sitting on their table. Andy had eaten a single shortbread cookie and a strawberry dipped in dark chocolate. Loretta said, “What do you think of Weight Watchers?”

“Nothing,” said Andy.

“I want him to desire me.”

“Did he ever desire you?”

Loretta gave her tea a thoughtful stir, and said, “Not in particular.”

“What were the girls like that he desired?”

“Unfortunately, all types.”

“What did he marry in you?”

Loretta put her teacup down, gazed into Andy’s face, and tapped her spoon on the plate. At last, she said, “I’m thinking he married a known quantity. I’m thinking he didn’t have the patience to figure the other girls out, so he, well, he went for the easy option. I think he liked that I was definite and didn’t take any bullshit.” She stopped tapping. “And no one else was the only child of a hundred thousand acres.”

Andy admired her ruthlessness; maybe it was the ranching background. She nodded, then said, “Well, my guess is that your looks belong to you, then — you can get in shape if you want to, and why not? It’s very soothing to do it, especially when the kids are in school. As far as Michael is concerned, I think you should be specific about your requirements.”

“You mean, like, sex?”

“I mean that, whenever he’s indecisive, you decide. That could work for sex.”

Loretta licked her lips. She said, “Yes, that could.” She pushed away her plate and shifted in her chair. The waiter eased over with a smile and took away the pyramid of treats. Now, Andy knew, would come what Loretta would consider the twisting of the knife. Loretta licked her lips again and said, “Was he really a bad child? I don’t mean disobedient, I mean not nice.”

But for Andy, no knife could be twisted that she herself had not already twisted many times. She said, “To be honest, Loretta, only Richie knows the answer to that question.”

“Richie seems so slick, especially now. I get the feeling he would read all my unconscious facial expressions and tell me exactly what I wanted to hear. At least Michael’s brutally honest.”

Andy decided that Michael and Loretta must have had an argument in the last twenty-four hours. She said, “And you like that.”

Loretta nodded, but said, “I don’t like it. I appreciate its benefits.”

Now Andy regarded her daughter-in-law for a long moment. She had never seen her with a bruise or a black eye, and in all the tattling he had done, Richie had never reported that Michael hit a girl (though there was a suspicious incident from that period when they were both at Cornell, where Michael ended up in the infirmary with a slash on his arm or leg, after which Richie fled Ithaca and ended up at Rutgers; Andy had been so happy to have him around that she had, mistakenly perhaps, overlooked the details). She hazarded only, “Michael has always had a bit of a temper.” Then, “And he’s a foot taller than you.”

“I’m quicker,” said Loretta, and Andy saw that, though this might be a possibility that she herself was only thinking of now, Loretta had reckoned with it for a long time — her matter-of-fact tone told Andy that she had strategies in place. She said, hesitantly, “I don’t know that you can rely on that.”

Then Loretta said the reassuring thing—“I haven’t had to so far”—and Andy found herself taking a deep breath. Had she really gone for so long without asking herself what Michael was capable of? But maybe that was what mothers were supposed to do. The conversation couldn’t go on after that; they both put their handbags on the table, and Andy said, “Shall we?” and Loretta said, “I really like what we’ve chosen. You’re parked in that garage on Fifty-eighth Street, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to walk me over there. It’s only a block.” And then, she had to admit, she fled.

—

THE POLLS LOOKED GOOD: Kevin Moore still had a problem with name recognition. Richie suspected that the problem was the “Kevin.” Once you thought “Kevin,” whatever came next fell away, whereas “Richard” was like “Mister”—it pointed at whatever followed. And “Rick” hardly existed at all. Even so, in the weeks before the convention at Madison Square Garden, the smart commentators predicted disaster for the Democrats. Clinton and Gore were marginally okay (in fact, whenever Clinton started talking, his poll numbers went up word by word, only to drop after he fell silent) but Hillary was a worry. Operation Rescue threatened to make a fuss about abortion; the Women’s Action Coalition threatened to make a bigger fuss about choice.

When Richie looked around the convention hall the first night, though, he knew everything would be fine. It was filled, not with regular, cynical, bored functionaries, but with women, blacks, Hispanics, people in wheelchairs and with canes — all sorts of people who never thought they would see the day they could cast their vote and nominate the next president. The enthusiasm told Richie (and Congressman Scheuer told him, too) that almost everyone in the Garden, shouting, screaming, laughing, waving posters, was experiencing him- or herself, at last and maybe for the first time, as a power broker. Congressman Scheuer said that it was a fine way to go out and a fine way to come in. And he clapped Richie on the shoulder as if he were dubbing him with a sword.

As a delegate, Richie’s job was to applaud, cheer, give information, and be a helpful public servant. He handed out a few “We Love Cuomo” signs so the New York delegation could cheer Cuomo’s nominating speech. He stood respectfully during the movie about the governor, whistled and shouted when the governor came onto the podium, made sure to stand up straight when the TV cameras turned toward him. And then he actually listened to the speech and was affected by it—“Nearly a whole generation surrendered in despair….They are our children.” Richie could not help thinking of Leo. “This is more than a recession! Our economy has been weakened fundamentally by twelve years of conservative Republican supply-side policies.” Of course, Richie could not fail to hear, in a corner of his brain, Michael laughing about outsourcing jobs, and Loretta saying, in her self-righteous way, “They don’t have any right to those jobs!” and then Ivy saying, “She doesn’t have any right to that ranch,” but only to him, in bed, after Michael and Loretta had gone home. “In no time at all, we have gone from the greatest seller nation, the greatest lender nation, the greatest creditor nation, to today, the world’s largest buyer, the world’s largest borrower, the world’s largest debtor nation. That is Republican supply-side.”

Richie had met the governor several times, and, like everyone, found him attractive, but now he felt the man’s words engraving themselves into his brain — words that he would use in his own campaign against Kevin. “This time we cannot afford to fail to deliver the message…The ship is headed toward the rocks!” And then he made a joke about the invisible hand of the market that everyone cheered, and Richie learned from him the whole time. “Prayer is always a good idea!” Only Richie laughed at that, since he had never prayed in his life. Richie had to admire the man’s flurry of great lines—“Bush said, ‘We have the will, but not the wallet!’ ” and he followed that with a reminder of the savings-and-loan bailout—“All of a sudden, the heavens opened and out of the blue, billions of dollars appeared, not for children, not for jobs, not for drug treatment or the ill or for health care, but hundreds of millions of dollars to bail out failed savings and loans.” Richie stopped gaping and glanced around. The cameras were on Cuomo, not him, but he did not want to look stupid, though in fact he felt stupid: he had agreed to run for Congress, and just now he realized that he was not prepared, in spite of all of his years of working for the congressman and watching him decide this and decide that, vote on this, vote on that, give this quote and that quote. He felt a trembling in the back of his neck, because he was not a deep thinker, an A student, a well-trained military man, or even a lawyer. He was in the right place at the right time with the right look and the right vocal timbre and the right connections. The congressman had often said, over the years, that Richie had a “knack for this stuff,” and maybe he did, because more often than not he could talk someone into something, but just at this moment, when he was watching the governor roll to a climax, he felt like he knew less and less, right down to nothing. The governor finished his speech to rousing applause; Richie yelled, clapped, whistled. A young woman from the office grabbed his hand, and the congressman gave him the thumbs-up. He was being taken upon the flood into the Congress, too young, too green, too stupid, but of course he would not stop it.

—

JANET KNEW, rationally, that if she’d had Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems when Emily was a baby, Emily would be a different person, but even so, and even though she’d read the book three times and nearly memorized it, putting the method into practice scared her. It seemed like a test, but not, say, a math test — rather, a driving test, dangerous and demanding. But Jared, who was hard to annoy, was almost annoyed because Jonah, nine months old, was still waking up to nurse at 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., and lately he was brighter — more interested in people and toys, and crawling all over the place — so it was harder to put him down at night. The whole time he was nursing before bed, his eyes would roll toward whatever sound he heard, whatever else might be happening. He was a curious boy, active. Jared said getting him to sleep through the night was now or never, and Janet didn’t disagree with him. But.

The moment she knew they were committed was when, after she nursed him on the couch (instead of his bedroom), she sat him up and kissed him a few times (instead of easing him, sleeping, into his crib), then took him over to Jared, who was watching TV, and to Emily, who was reading The Chronicle of the Horse, for a good-night kiss. They were kind and supportive, as if Jonah were heading out into the wilderness with a secret message that he had to deliver to rebel forces all by himself. Then she carried him upstairs and into his room, laid him down, kissed him good night, covered him, and walked out without thinking about whether he might grab the top railing of the crib and launch himself, or whether she should have solved his sleep problems months ago.

The crying started after about a minute, first whimpers of disbelief, then shouts and wails. At three minutes, she went in, gave him a kiss, noted that he was still lying down, and walked out. After another five minutes, she did this again. The technique prescribed that she should then wait ten minutes, but she could only manage eight. She went in. Jonah stared up at her, his mouth open in horror, the whimpers ululating into shouts. He held out his arms. Janet spoke much more firmly and cheerily than she felt. “Good night, sweetie! Time to go to sleep.” She patted his forehead, let her hand linger there; he was a beautiful child, with large, bright eyes, thick hair, and full lips. Then she turned and walked out, closing the door. Three minutes after that, the crying stopped abruptly, and she tiptoed down the stairs, exhausted. Jared’s show was still on, Emily was still reading The Chronicle. Twenty minutes seemed like two hours.

He did wake up around two — two-thirteen. She went into his room and did what she was supposed to do. Then, outside his door, she was so tired that she slumped against the wall. Three minutes, five minutes. Two minutes after her second, supposedly reassuring visit, he went quiet, and she did not peek in to see whether he had put his head between the bars of his crib (not possible — the bars were two and a half inches apart). She went back to bed, lay awake for a while, noticed that Jared had not moved, and did, indeed, fall asleep. Jonah was up at his usual time, just after six. She entered his room with a feeling of such profound guilt that she felt thrilled, but also astonished, when he greeted her with his usual big smile and waving arms, and when she picked him up his arms went around her neck. Jared and Emily said nothing about the whole ordeal at breakfast. Jared said he would be late for supper, and Emily reminded her that she had promised to take her to the stables that afternoon — she had to ride both Pesky and Sunlight, especially if Janet planned to go out Saturday, like she’d said. Yes, she did. “Well, then,” said Emily, in a Denise Herman sort of voice, “are you going to come over and clean your tack? You haven’t cleaned it in two weeks, and it’s a little yucky,” which made Janet get up, go into the bathroom off the kitchen, and laugh silently into the mirror. When she came back out, Emily was setting some bits of scrambled egg on the tray of Jonah’s highchair, and he was touching them with the tip of his finger. Jared was saying, “Honey, give him a bit of the watermelon.”

That night, Night Number Two, it took him twenty-four despair-filled minutes to fall asleep, but when he woke up at two-thirty-four, he only cried out once; she stood outside his door for five minutes, and he didn’t make another sound. On Night Number Three, he fell asleep in fourteen minutes; on Night Number Four, in five; and on Night Number Five, he took a deep breath when she kissed him and patted him, and was, as far as she could tell, sleeping by the time she left the room. And he didn’t wake up until seven-thirty.

The only semi-sad aspect was that she had no one to impart this newfound wisdom to — none of her friends had babies, she didn’t know any younger women well enough to give them unsolicited advice, and Jared and Emily thought that it was all a matter of course. So she kept it quiet, another pleasurable secret between herself and Jonah, another reason never to get a babysitter and to put off the nanny question for six months. She didn’t actually want to be away from him, so why bother?

—

RICHIE HAD the lease on his little campaign office on Sixth Avenue near Ninth Street until the end of the year, which gave him plenty of time to get it cleaned up. The best thing about it (it was only fourteen feet wide and thirty feet deep, and so had been cheap) was that it was across the street from Colson’s, where he always went for coffee. It was there that Charlie and the girlfriend ambushed him at 9:00 a.m. the day after the election. They let him get his coffee and pay for it, along with a rugelach and an apricot tart, so that his hands were full and his cup was hot, and he couldn’t get away. And they stood between him and the door, too. Richie was tired of the campaign and ready for a break, but he said, “Okay, let’s sit down,” and Charlie pulled out the seat they had been keeping for him. Richie wondered if they’d followed him from Park Slope.

Richie had won, 53.4 percent to 46.1 percent, leaving out the handful who’d voted for the socialists and the three voters who voted for the Conservative Party. It was a margin that would have deeply shamed Congressman Scheuer. Richie himself didn’t know if this was a good omen or a bad one, a sign of the times or something personal. He told himself that he was in, all that mattered.

Riley was talking. Charlie was smiling. Richie was putting on his paying-attention face. Riley said, “Sir, as far as I am concerned, and the people I work with, this is the most important issue of our age. I’m not kidding.”

“She’s not kidding,” said Charlie.

Richie said, “Explain it to me again, in a way that I can understand.”

She was good. She did not take a single impatient breath; she did not, even fleetingly, get a “you idiot” look on her face. She did what he would have done with an angry Perot supporter — she smiled and said, “Okay, Clinton was elected, just barely, and now is really our only chance. I mean, let’s put it this way—”

Charlie interrupted, “Pornographers have control of the White House now, and militant homosexuals run the armed forces.”

Richie actually glanced around to see if anyone was looking at them. Loretta had said almost that very thing a week or so ago, except that she, of course, meant it.

“And,” said Riley, “we can close the ozone hole because that was an atheist plot, and now we’ve won.” She had a big smile. That was her pretty part. She got serious immediately, and leaned toward him. “But the greenhouse effect is harder to deal with. We atheists and our trained-seal scientists can’t do it alone, and God doesn’t seem to care, so I want a job.”

“What would your job be?” said Richie.

“Congressmen have staff,” said Charlie. “People who get on TV and say, ‘The congressman has no comment at this time.’ ”

“I do need someone like that. What’s your name? Riley? Let’s hear you.”

Riley cleared her throat, then said, “The congressman has no comment at this time about whether six prostitutes did, indeed, jump from the third-story windows of the West Wing, but he would like to point out that all of the prostitutes signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change while they were visiting with the president, and are completely in agreement with the aims of the protocol, namely, to commit themselves to a reduction of carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur hexafluoride, and, their own personal favorite, nitrous oxide, or laughing gas.” Her smile was perfectly flat and fake, just the way the networks liked it. She went on: “And, of course, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. We understand that, before the jump, three of the prostitutes were preparing a statement to this effect. We greatly regret what appears to be a heartbreaking tragedy, and we would like to remind the audience that everyone must pull together to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by our agreed-upon five-point-two percent. Thank you, and, once again, the congressman regrets being called away on pressing business just now. I have no further comment.” Her smile broadened.

Richie said, “Perfect.”

Charlie said, “I’ve been coaching her.”

Riley said, “I can also answer hate mail, death threats, and accusations that you bear the mark of the devil on your forehead, which is why you always wear a baseball cap.”

“Do you have practice answering those sorts of letters?”

“We don’t answer them, but I think they should be answered.”

Charlie offered, helpfully, “She still has to write her dissertation, but she’s finished with her coursework.”

“What is the subject of your dissertation?”

“Methods of motivating governing elites to understand and address climate issues.”

“So — I am your experimental subject?”

“You’re the only one either of us has met.”

Charlie said, “We drove through Iowa during the drought four years ago, but I was too shy to stop and see Joe or even Minnie. I really liked Minnie.”

Riley turned glum, then said, “I am so sorry I missed that. But I did two papers on the Yellowstone fires.”

“How old are you?” said Richie.

“Twenty-six,” said Riley.

“Do you want to be part of an experiment?”

“Sure,” said Riley.

“My sister-in-law would be one of those people writing you hate mail. You should meet her and try out your techniques on her.”

“Michael’s wife,” said Charlie.

Richie nodded.

Charlie said, “I got that vibe off her. The my-dad-has-twenty-thousand-head-of-cattle-and-we-eat-ribs-for-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner-and-you-will-remove-them-from-my-cold-dead-hands sort of vibe.”

Richie looked at the clock behind the baked-goods display. It was almost eleven, and he had done nothing yet this morning. Ivy was not sanguine about the presidential election. She thought the victory was enough to shrink the population of right-wing bacteria, but not enough to kill them all, so the stronger ones would reproduce and return, more “virulent” than ever (though she did think that eventually she would win over Michael, who was basically well meaning, and Loretta, who had to be more sharply defined than Michael just to maintain his interest and respect). Richie said, “What are you doing this morning, Riley?”

“Following you around.”

Richie said, “I will pay you each one dollar over the minimum wage, which is four twenty-five per hour, to help me clean up my campaign headquarters, starting right now; one hour every day for lunch; no benefits until I get to Washington. But you can come for dinner Friday night and meet Ivy and Leo.”

“Five fifty,” said Charlie.

Richie pulled some change out of his pocket and threw it on the table, then said, “You got it.”