Campaigning for Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Day One

Cora walks into campaign headquarters wearing the wrong blazer, and the candidate loses his place in his speech when he sees her.

I left room 1112 at six minutes past six, with my shoes in my hand.

I didn't wake him.

I didn't leave a note, because every note I started began with "Dear Senator."

In the elevator I put on my glasses, tied my hair in a knot, and told my reflection that this was fine.

It was not fine.

It was the least fine thing that had ever happened to a human being.

By eight o'clock I was standing in a converted furniture store on Grand Avenue, with a lanyard around my neck that said CORA DUNN, INTERN.

The words KITTREDGE FOR IOWA were painted across the front window in blue.

Forty interns crowded the old showroom, sitting on sofas that were still for sale.

A girl next to me whispered that the candidate was a former state road director who had never run for anything.

"He's supposed to be amazing," she said. "He's also a widower, which polls well, which is terrible to say."

I said nothing.

I was busy remembering exactly what his mouth had done to my inner thigh.

In my tote was a charcoal blazer.

I had grabbed it off the chair in the dark, because it matched mine and I was running.

It was too long in the sleeves.

I slid my hand into the pocket, and my fingers found a folded index card.

I opened it under the tote's lip.

Welcome, it said, in square handwriting I had watched sign a room-service slip at two in the morning.

Under it were three lines and one underlined word.

Tell them why I'm here. Roads. Then SHUT UP.

The blazer was his.

My own was on the chair in 1112, with my gym key in the pocket.

"Good morning," said a woman at the front.

She was in her fifties, with an iron-grey bob and reading glasses on a chain, and when she spoke every intern straightened.

"I'm Constance Hubbell, your campaign manager. You are here because we need bodies. Be useful, be quiet and don't post anything."

Nobody laughed.

"And now the candidate."

The side door opened and Nelson Kittredge walked into the showroom.

He wore a navy suit and a blue tie.

He was freshly shaved and his hair was still damp.

He looked like a man who had slept two hours and been very happy for most of them.

There was no beard.

There was nothing at all like the photo in the packet.

Someone near me sighed and said, "He's so much hotter than his picture."

I put my packet over my face and pretended to read it.

"Thank you for coming," Nelson said, and his voice went through me like a plow.

He had a speech.

I knew he had a speech, because it was in my tote, between my wallet and a granola bar.

"I'm Nelson," he said. "I'm here because of roads."

A few interns smiled.

"I'm here because, in my last job, I signed forty-one letters to the families of people who died on county roads nobody had paved."

He paused.

He was good at it, I thought, and for the first time I understood what people meant by the word "candidate."

Then he looked across the room, over forty heads, and found my face.

He stopped talking.

His eyes dropped to the lanyard on my chest, to my name, and climbed back up to my eyes.

The whole showroom was silent.

"And," he said, in a different voice, "I'm here because..."

He said nothing for three full seconds.

Constance Hubbell's head turned.

"Because I like people," Nelson finished badly. "Sorry. I'd forgotten the end. Thank you all for being here. Please go find a desk."

The interns clapped uncertainly.

The girl beside me said, "That was so humble."

Hallie Latham, the field organizer who ran my team, handed me a stack of voter lists and a thermos cup of terrible coffee.

"You're with me," she said. "You're in the back. You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'm okay."

"Go pee. You'll feel better."

I went.

The supply room was across from the bathroom, and the door was open.

An arm came out of it and pulled me inside by the elbow.

The door shut.

Nelson stood against a shelf of printer paper in the dark.

His jaw was clenched and his hands were up.

"Mari," he said.

"Cora," I said. "Cora Dunn."

"Cora."

He breathed it out.

"I would never," he said. "I want you to hear that. I didn't know. If I had known who you were..."

"I didn't know either."

"I know. I saw your face."

"I found out at six this morning," I said. "From my welcome folder. It has your beard on it."

He laughed once, helplessly, and shut his eyes.

Then he opened them.

"Listen to me," he said. "Constance can move you tonight, to the state party or the field office in Ames."

"I'll write you the best recommendation in Iowa, and nobody will ever hear why."

"Please go home before anyone knows."

I looked at him.

He was asking me to give up the thing I had wanted since I was fifteen, and he was asking kindly.

It made me furious.

"No," I said.

"Cora."

"I didn't do anything wrong. Neither did you. I applied on my own, in June, and I got this because I'm good at it."

"You don't have to..."

"I'm staying."

I took his index card out of my tote and slapped it against his chest.

"You forgot your speech," I said. "Roads, then shut up. That part you did fine."

I opened the door and walked back out into the showroom with my head up.

My hands didn't stop shaking until lunch.

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