Truth Like the Sun (15 page)

When they parked alongside a row of shops near Mercer and Eleventh, Roger noticed a young man sticking large block letters—R-O-G—in a window and slowly registered exactly where they were before following Annie into his new campaign headquarters. Close to twenty people were stacking signs, stuffing envelopes and answering landlines and cell phones in a cluttered space the size of a studio apartment. It wasn’t so much the commotion on his behalf that excited him as the mix of volunteers in their twenties and eighties. Someone shouted his name, and everybody’s attention swiveled toward him.

After disjointed applause, he asked everyone what exactly they thought they were doing here and then worked the room, greeting the smooth-skinned college kids first. “Extra credit?” he said. They nodded, and he laughed.

“We could’ve picked any campaign, though,” a girl with jagged bangs explained.

“Why mine?”

“You seem honest,” said an earringed boy with an armful of
Morgan for Mayor
yard signs. “We hope you’ll talk on campus.”

“Definitely,” Roger told him, then turned to the older ladies, careful not to say
Nice to meet you
in case he simply hadn’t placed them yet. Finally, he got to the large gray woman filling envelopes behind a desk. The familiar empathy in her baggy eyes made him suspect she knew him well.

“So how the hell are you?” he asked.

She rose gingerly and shuffled heavily around the desk as the commotion resumed around them. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” she said softly, before wrapping her arms around him and squeezing.

She smelled like almonds and dead leaves. He knew he’d slept with her, but when? Her name began with
D
, for sure. Diane? Diana? Denise? He held on, stalling.

SHRONTZ READ HELEN’S
story pitch, glanced back at the draft, then at the pitch again. It was all she could do to resist reading it aloud to him. He was painfully slow most mornings, slogging, she suspected, through pharmaceutical hangovers. Finally, he walked by, heading to the morning meeting, and mumbled, “Pretty close on the reporting?”

“Yeah, I need to double-check quite a few things and talk to several more people and see what Lundberg has for me and so on, but what I really need is a sit-down with him.”

He yawned. “Think you could file by late Wednesday?”

The earlier she turned the story in the more time everyone would have to tinker and second-guess. But wanting Friday A-1 and needing Shrontz in her corner, she bobbed her head.

“Put in another call to his campaign,” he muttered, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to her.

A half hour later, a fully awake Shrontz rushed out of the meeting. “We’re running it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Helen’s eyes widened. “No, I—”

“We’re in a competitive market here,” he said, no doubt parroting higher-ranked editors. “All barrels.”

“What?”

He turned his hands into fake guns and pointed them at her. “All barrels blazing. And everything we know,” he added, “about
Mr. Seattle
.”

“Wait. I’ve at least got to talk to him, because it’s still not even—”

“Birnbaum loves it. Marguerite
really
loves it. Everyone does.”

“That’s a
draft
. There’s still a lot of reporting. I mean—”

“You just said you were pretty close,” he reminded her. “Competitive market,” he repeated, hustling toward his desk. “Give Morgan a deadline.”

Helen walked as slowly as she could to the drinking fountain and back.
Tomorrow?
She glanced at the first page of her draft again. A daring premise thin on facts. When the words started to blur, she looked up and saw the backlit silhouette of Marguerite strutting toward her, blowing imaginary smoke off the tips of her index fingers.

HELEN AND A SCRUM
of reporters, photographers and TV crews followed Morgan and his volunteers—armed with campaign flyers, yard signs and dog biscuits—through the Phinney Ridge neighborhood, north of downtown.

“So what’s your strategy?” asked an elderly woman at the corner of Fifty-second and Palatine.

“To go everywhere the mayor doesn’t go and meet as many voters as I can,” Morgan cheerfully replied. “And to tell the truth—all the time, every time.”

“Tell your people,” she said loudly, “they can put one of those big signs in my yard.”

Helen tried to conceal her mounting panic. The afternoon was fading fast, and she still didn’t have a formal interview set up. Ask your questions in front of everybody else, Ted Severson had suggested, or hope for a break in the schedule.

When the repetitive doorbelling—“I’m Roger Morgan, and I’m running for mayor”—continued south into the Fremont neighborhood, she broke from the pilgrimage, even though the
Times
reporter was still eavesdropping on Morgan’s every utterance, and called Shrontz, pleading for more time. “Lock and load,” he said. “Competitive market.”

“Right.”

“Huh?”

“I
came
from a
competitive market
.”

“Why are you
shouting
at me, Helen?”

She hung up and, instead of rejoining the paparazzi, tailed Severson into a neighborhood espresso shop, where she watched him lean on his cane and order a drip coffee.

“Cool,” replied the sleeveless, tattooed barista. Once he got his steaming mug, Severson dropped with a groan into a chair at a tiny square table, glaring at all the red stools and the people wearing funny hats, throwback glasses and striped shirts.

“You mind?”

He shrugged, though it was clear he did. He studied the heart-shaped foam design atop her latte and then the barista, as if uncovering some lesbian tryst. He obviously wanted to get up and leave, but his coffee was still too hot to guzzle and he hadn’t gotten a go-cup.

Sitting this close, she noticed just how narrow his skull was, his nose and chin coming to points, his eyes reduced to slits, as if he’d seen more than enough already. She started gently, but even the friendliest question about Roger Morgan prompted the stink-eye and a bland response. Impatiently, she prodded him about the fair’s little-publicized downsides.

“Can we go off the record for a minute?” he asked.

“You mean not for attribution?”

“I mean
off the record
, as in what I’m about to say can’t be printed or repeated.”

She hesitated. “You’re running his campaign, Mr. Severson. You’re one of his closest friends. I’d like whatever you might say to be on the record.”

“Who told you I’m running his campaign?” His voice rose. “You’d think
a trained observer
would’ve noticed by now that Roger runs his own show.”

When his responses to her questions slowed down, as if his batteries were dying or he was doing his damndest to bore her to death, it crossed her mind that Severson probably didn’t even think women should
be
reporters. He told her how many years—forty-six—he’d been around politics and the press, leaving the number hanging with its insinuation that he knew exactly what she was up to. She pretended to listen but mostly watched, noting how his ash-colored hair hovered like a messy halo over his freckled scalp.

“What did you want to tell me off the record?” she finally asked.

“Thought you weren’t interested.”

“Deep background, just for my edification.”

“Call it whatever you want.” He glanced out the window. “You listening to me now?”

“Of course.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to tear down such a great man.”

Helen blushed. “You went off the record to scold me?”

“I’m not finished,” he snarled, breathing audibly now. “I suggest you take a good look at those chips on your shoulders and see whether they factor into your sense of fairness with Roger and the others you’ve skewered for sport through the years, including a certain senator from South Carolina. Okay, now we’re back on the record. Any more questions, Ms. Gulanos?”

She found her voice, but there wasn’t much behind it and her heart was kicking. She hadn’t moved all the way out here to get lectured on newspaper shit storms back East. “Mr. Severson, I’m putting a whole lot of extra time into this, to be absolutely fair. I wouldn’t—”

“What are we even talking about?” He brought the cup to his
mouth again, but it was empty and he looked away. “I’ll try to get you some time with him around dinner, but no promises, okay? Good day.” His voice rose on
day
the way Paul Harvey’s did on the radio, a squiggly vein bulging near his temple, his fingers going white as his weight shifted onto the cane, his suit coat hanging so wide open that Helen couldn’t miss the dark handle of a pistol bulging from his left armpit.

PAIN HAD CRAWLED
up Roger’s calves into his knees and was headed for his hips by the time this doorbelling marathon approached the last house, where there was supposed to be a barbecue in his honor.

The front yard of the mustard-yellow three-story was adorned with Tibetan prayer flags, a ceramic Buddha, African masks and plastic pink flamingos. Getting closer, he saw much more—a metal sun, birdbaths, clamshells, wind chimes, sneakers wrapped around overhead telephone lines, kites and swings dangling from maple branches. The largest bumper sticker on the VW van parked out front read
Visualize One Love
. He heard excited voices rounding the far side of the house, repeating his name. People stepped outdoors to eyeball the novelty candidate in his button-down shirt, nobody knowing what to say. It was all he could do to sustain his smile, perspiring there on the cracked walkway, eager blades of grass sprouting around his wingtips. Young and old people, dozens now, tittering, waiting. He dabbed at his brow with the back of his wrist. “So what’s for dinner?” he finally asked, his eyes stinging, and everyone acted like Seinfeld had just showed up.

They limply shook his hand and offered beer. What he needed was food and water, a bathroom and a couch, but he accepted a warm Pabst and stood there, his feet sizzling as if he’d scaled some peak. The chicken’ll be a while, he overheard, still raw on the grill. He had trouble following questions and suggestions, everybody’s eyes on him, half of them drunk and overly earnest, trying too hard to be substantive.

Nodding along, as if he knew precisely what they meant, he looked around to see how many reporters were still shadowing him.
He spotted the
Times
guy, a snide columnist with one of the weeklies, the KING-5 airhead, another who claimed he was writing for
Slate
magazine and, of course, Helen Gulanos, who was
insisting
on talking to him
today
. He desperately tried to stay alert, to be
on
, but he was finished, hopelessly repeating himself and answering questions that hadn’t been asked. Finally, he excused himself to the bathroom, hoping the domineering woman he’d just abandoned wasn’t in mid-question.

The tiny, windowless dollhouse bathroom made him perspire even more, the walls a frightening blood-red, the mirror a foggy antique, the sink barely large enough for his swollen hands. He splashed his face repeatedly with cold water to shake the grogginess, trying to hide the one thing an old candidate can’t show: exhaustion. The day had started with such giddiness, but he should have known better. A poll this early meant less than nothing, and while the machinists and Asians were kind, it’s not as if they were campaigning for him.

Cornered as soon as he stepped outside, this time by a bearded man with a
Fuck Capitalism
T-shirt, he got quizzed on same-sex marriages, organic-food certifications, the plight of polar bears and other issues he didn’t much care about while overhearing drunks explain in the background that yes, they in fact had run out of propane. So yes, they’ll either have to borrow a tank from a neighbor or bake the chickens in the oven. Feeling dizzy, he scanned the room for snacks but saw only potato chip crumbs. Meanwhile, he was getting grilled by a man with oven-cleaner breath and ogled by three older women too shy to approach. Behind them, another ring of gawkers monitored his availability, waiting for an opening so they could say they
met
him.

Annie finally rescued him, apologizing profusely to everyone within earshot, pulling him outside as if some emergency had arisen, whispering that Teddy insisted they get him dinner
right now
. Roger stopped at the gate to thank everyone but his voice was too weak, his words lost in the confusing bustle. They all assumed he’d come back shortly. The entire departure was muffed, his largest crowd of the day squandered.

•   •   •

HELEN LET HIM FINISH
chewing the oyster crackers. They were in Ivar’s Salmon House now, across Lake Union from downtown, waiting for his dinner while frat boys cussed at the happy-hour bar and Severson and Annie eavesdropped from an adjacent table.

She tried not to look frazzled, but she’d raced here from her apartment after explaining Elias’s allergies and food and video preferences to yet another new babysitter, this one a big-eyed fourteen-year-old who kept bragging that she had a Girl Scout badge for child care. The thrill of the hunt had faded anyway, especially given that Morgan looked half-dead. Behind his head was the cityscape with the Space Needle off to the side, as if the other buildings were either in awe of it or refused to be seen with it.

HER HAIR WAS
so thick and unruly that it made her face seem small and intensely focused, with a contained desperation in her eyes and unasked questions tightening her expressions. Despite all her nonchalance, he could tell she was burning inside. He pointed out a seaplane on the lake so she wouldn’t notice his hand trembling as he sipped his water.

There was no rhythm to her queries. She went from asking about hobbies—mountains he’d climbed and sports he watched—to his churchgoing habits. She followed an aside about whether it was true that he’d paid bums to tell him stories with a point-blank question: Was there anything apocryphal about how he’d come up with the idea for the Space Needle?

He’d lost track of what he was saying, mumbling through what felt like yet another minefield, knowing her questions deserved more thought. Mercifully, a tray of oyster shooters was set down in front of him.