Prologue : Part 3

The Running Mate
by Joe Klein

(Page 3 of 3)

A cellular phone in the distance. "Hey, Senator," shouted Mustafa, his driver. "Headquarters. They got the numbers from tomorrow's R-W."

Nell sighed. "See?" she said. "Campaign mode."

"Fuck campaign mode," he said softly - but intensely, just above a whisper. "You think I'm asking you to marry me for the sake of appearances? I'm asking you to marry me because you are..." He struggled for something clever, and failed. "The most ... interesting person I know."

"'Interesting'?" She laughed.

"This isn't funny," he said, but, of course, he knew it had to be. "All right: I'm asking you to marry me because ... Well, what are you going to wear to church tomorrow?" During the day, when the sun had been hot, she'd worn a spectacular wide-brimmed straw hat with a white nylon mesh band that flowed down her back, and Jackie O sunglasses - with the khaki suit, she looked as if she were on a safari photo shoot for some fashion magazine. Plainly, she hadn't been born to do politics. But he loved having her there, and he was still pretty much amazed that she finally had agreed to come out from New York - although she did affect his ability to concentrate on the business at hand. Then again, she'd only been traveling with him for two days. This - Nell working his turf, living his life - was still new, for both of them. He had hoped she'd find his world as ... charming as he'd found hers; well, maybe not as charming. He was hoping she'd find it tolerable.

"What does my Sunday best have to do with anything?" she asked.

"You're the first woman I've ever been with where I'm even thinking about it," he said. "You make everything - "

"Groovy?"

"Wild thing," he said, making the connection. "You make my heart sing." Truly a great rock lyric; he'd never focused on it before. Simple, elegant, perfect. She made his heart sing. "Hey, you want to go dancing?" he asked. "Then we won't be in campaign mode."

"Dancing?" He'd used this tactic before, shifting gears on her, proposing an outlaw getaway - dancing, usually. They had danced, on occasion; but they'd never actually gone dancing.

"We're about forty-five minutes from the Crescent Lake Casino, where Mom met Dad. Saturday night, they'll have some old-fart band, or maybe square dancing, or polkas," he said. "C'mon, let's go."

"You just want to hear the numbers," she said mischievously. "You want to get me out of the cornfield, so you can take the phone call and hear the numbers. You're not even interested in getting me to marry you anymore."

"Bull shit," he said, making them two words. "That's a done deal. You're going to marry me, sooner or later." He snaked an arm around her waist, nuzzled her neck, went woozy at her smell. "But right now," he said, "we're going dancing."

"I do hope it's square dancing," she replied, reaching down, squeezing the back of his thigh. "I'll be able to ask the caller something I've always wondered about: is do-si-do short for something? And what about allemande left - is that a reference to E1 Alamein? And - "

"Senator!" Mustafa shouted. "You comin' or what?"

"Coming!" Charlie Martin said. Nell rolled her eyes.

Mustafa was leaning against the van. He was, Nell thought, a strange specimen: a ta11, middle-aged black man who chain-smoked Virginia Slims, thin and angular except for an incongruous potbelly. He handed Charlie the phone.

"Who?" Charlie asked.

"Aunt Mary."

It made sense. Mary Proctor ran his home-state office. She knew all the pooh-bahs at the Register-World. She'd have their poll numbers first.

"So okay, Mary," he said. "Cut to the chase. What's the story?"

"You're behind. Only a couple of points, margin of error," she said. "But behind."

"To that little turd?" he said. "No fucking way."

"As my granddaughter would say," Mary said, "way."

Copyright © 2000 by Joe Klein.

About the Author

Joe Klein, a journalist for nearly three decades, is currently Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. In addition to Primary Colors, his previous books include Payback: Five Marines After Vietnam and Woody Guthrie: A Life.