The Three-Day Affair (10 page)

I set down the magazine and scrolled the document titled
Albright
on the Issues
. It ran sixty-four single-spaced pages. World peace wasn’t on the agenda. This was a state election, and the concerns were domestic: economic development, education,
infrastructure
, health care.

I was willing to help sell the product of Nolan Albright to
whoever
wanted to buy it, but I’d never written a press release in my life. I began to fantasize about Cynthia, the real PR pro, trading in her pumps for cowboy boots and coming out here to work with me on the campaign. Our romance blooming under the wide Missouri sky.

And then I began to read.

Those yard signs were becoming the bane of the campaign, and their continued absence made them seem all the more critical. None of us knew for certain whether or not Nolan was going to win. The incumbent was retiring at the end of the term, and our
opponent, like Nolan, had never run for office before. Ed Cassidy was twice Nolan’s age. He owned several mammoth car
dealerships
across the state, and back in September he was running a couple of percentage points ahead of Nolan in the polls. But
polling
wasn’t especially precise in a district-wide election. Our real barometers were our guts and our ears.

We believed we had a shot, but Cassidy’s smiling face seemed to be everywhere—his signs were in storefronts and at major
intersections
, and of course large banners stood in the parking lots of his dealerships. Driving around the district, it would’ve been easy to conclude that Nolan simply didn’t exist.

And so when one cool morning a dusty diesel truck bearing the name “Show-Me Sign Company” finally clanked into the
Albrights
’ driveway, Molly’s approving bark spoke for all of us. Over the next couple of days, I learned the roads of northwest
Missouri
. For me these were the best days of the campaign, driving alone under deep blue skies into small towns, along rivers, and through field after field of spent corn. Sometimes I’d drive into a neighborhood to deliver a half-dozen signs. Other times I’d travel fifteen or twenty miles on remote roads to drop off a single sign that hardly anyone would ever see.

If nobody was home, I’d leave the sign on the front stoop. But as often as not, somebody would be there to thank me, maybe offer a glass of water or cup of coffee. We might chat for a
minute
. And talking with them in their front yards and their kitchens, catching a glimpse of their landlocked lives, for the first time I found myself believing that there were other places to live out one’s life besides a city.

I wouldn’t act on that belief for several more years—not until the shooting that drove me out of New York. But rural Missouri gave me the first inkling that there were ways to be content
without
having to become the white hot center of everything.

A few days before the election, campaign headquarters started
receiving
calls that yard signs were vanishing in the night. To
retaliate
, I showed up at the house that night carrying two “Vote Cassidy” signs that I’d daringly swiped from the lot of one of
Cassidy
’s own car dealerships. I’d done it as a prank—to lighten the mood, I guess—but Nolan wasn’t amused.

He took me aside. “Elections can be brutal, but there are rules.”

“Okay,” I said. “Fair enough.”

“I want us running a clean campaign, is all.”

“Understood.”

He sighed. “You’ve been a tremendous help to me, Will. I can’t thank you enough.”

Later, after everyone else had left for the night and Nolan’s
parents
had gone to bed, Nolan and I poured tumblers of Scotch and sat down on the living room sofa. Molly immediately jumped up between us and rested her snout on Nolan’s leg.

“As a kid,” Nolan said, “I remember sitting right here, in this room, watching Ronald Reagan bait the Soviet Union on TV. I’m sure you remember all that ‘Evil Empire,’ ‘Star Wars’ end-of-
the-world
bullshit.”

I did, vaguely. At the time, I was more interested in
Star Wars
the movie.

He sipped his drink in thought. “I was ten years old, but I knew trash talking when I heard it. And Reagan was the most reckless trash talker I’d ever heard, because thousands of nuclear
warheads
were pointed at him. And at me—and my friends and my parents. Though my parents didn’t seem to think much about it one way or the other. I could see it for what it was, though—reckless and stupid. As far as I was concerned, he was going to cause the end of the world.” The dog’s stomach gurgled. “So that’s when I decided to write him a letter.”

“Who? Reagan?”

“Of course. And not some childish, emotional plea, either, but a reasoned argument for using the office of the president to end the risk of nuclear war.”

He was looking at the dog, not me. The story seemed to
embarrass
him, and I wondered why, until I remembered the fan
letter
I’d written at about the same age to the actress Carrie Fisher. I’d slid the letter into an envelope I’d made out of aluminum foil so it would stand out.
I’m not asking you to marry me
, I’d written.
But I know we’d be friends.

“So what’d you say in the letter?”

“I said that name-calling only increased the likelihood of a brawl. Basic school-yard diplomacy.” He looked up at me. “
People
were people, I figured. How different could it possibly be
between
leaders of nations?” He shook his head.

“I take it you never heard back.”

“Two weeks,” he said. “It came quickly, I’ll give him that. I remember coming home from school and seeing it on the kitchen table. Nobody else was home. It was a thin envelope. But it didn’t need to be thick. All it needed to say—and I was sure that it would—was that Reagan had seen the error of his ways.” He finished his drink in one long swallow, set the tumbler on the coffee table, and looked at me again. “Two sentences. I’ll never forget them.” His eyes widened. “Hold that thought—I still have it.”

He was off the sofa and down the hallway toward his
bedroom
. While waiting, I gave the dog a good scratching behind the ear, earning a thankful groan.

Nolan returned from his bedroom with the envelope, now faded from time. He opened it and removed the single page, folded in thirds, and handed it to me. I unfolded it. The letter was typed on stationery with the presidential seal.

I handed it back to Nolan.

“At least it’s personalized,” I said. “And nice enough.”

“
Heartened?
” He glared at the letter as if he’d received it only minutes before instead of fourteen years ago. “He was
heartened
by my letter? Hell, he missed the whole fucking point.”

“It probably wasn’t Reagan who wrote it, anyway.”

“Yeah. Tell that to the kid who’s lying in bed every night, scared shitless, sure the world’s going to explode before he’s even kissed a girl. This letter only made things worse.” He refolded the letter. “That’s when I made a deal with myself. Two promises, for when I became an adult. Number one, I’d make sure that no kid went through what I went through. And number two, I’d help kids make a difference, so they wouldn’t have to lie in bed at night
feeling
powerless. In return for those promises, I’d stop worrying about the state of the world until I turned eighteen, when I’d be old enough to be taken seriously. That was the deal I struck, the promise to myself that saved my life. And it’s the promise I’m keeping today.”

He looked at his watch, then down at the carpet, then back at me and grimaced. I didn’t want him feeling uncomfortable—his story had moved me deeply, and I nearly confessed my short-lived Carrie Fisher crush.

“When you write your presidential memoirs,” I told him
finally
, “be sure to include this chapter.”

Nolan slid the letter back into its envelope. He looked at me and smiled politely. “Let’s just win this one first.”

The evening before the election, Evan and Jeffrey flew into town to show their support. When they arrived at Nolan’s house, we said quick hellos and put them to work on the phones. But work got interrupted when Luke, a senior at Northwest Missouri State and one of Nolan’s most dedicated volunteers, came into the house in tears.

“He ran right in front of my truck …,” he was saying to
anyone
who’d listen. “… It was so dark … I didn’t see …”

Molly.

Mercifully, it’d been quick. By the time we made it outside and down the long driveway to the road, the dog was already lifeless. I hadn’t ever seen a dead dog before. Its tongue really did hang out. We stood over it—Nolan, Luke, myself, and a few of the morbidly curious among the volunteers—not knowing what to do. A minute later, Nolan’s parents followed us outside with a flashlight.

“Maybe I should go home,” Luke said.

Nolan’s mother nodded, her eyes wet. She was shivering. “Maybe you should.”

“Mom …,” Nolan began.

His father shut off the flashlight. “Come with me, son,” he said to Luke, and led him away from the street, toward the shed. They returned with a wheelbarrow.

Late that night, after the volunteers had all gone home and Evan and Jeffrey had left for their motel, Nolan and I took care of some sad business at the edge of the backyard and the corn crop.

The weather had been mild lately, and the ground gave easily. I’d thought we might put the dog into a box first, some makeshift coffin. Instead, without ceremony Nolan lifted the dog out of the wheelbarrow and set it down in the hole. He must have noticed my expression, because he said, “It’ll decompose faster this way.” He scooped up some dirt and let it fall onto the dog in the hole, then offered me the shovel in exchange for the flashlight.

“I’d rather not,” I said. “I know it’s just a dog, but … I’d just rather not.”

“I understand. It’s morbid. I don’t like doing it, either. Though I guess it’s better to be the one with the shovel than the one in the hole.” He added more dirt to the grave until there was a small mound, which he patted down with the back of the shovel.

“Please tell me,” he said, as we walked back toward the shed with the shovel and wheelbarrow, “that this is not an omen.”

I stopped walking. “Nolan, this is
not
an omen. This was an accident.”

“I just really want to win this, you know? It’s probably a couple of years too early for me to be running. I know I don’t quite have the experience yet, or the name recognition. Or the money.” He glanced back toward the house. “But I really want to win this one. For her, you know what I mean?”

“Of course I do.” I felt as if I needed to say more. “Look, you’ve worked your ass off and run a good, honest campaign. You’re going to be a great politician. The best kind, because you actually give a shit.”

He nodded. “All right. I’m convinced.” We returned to the house.

Twenty hours later, we crowded into the lounge at the Regency Hotel in Stokesville. Under a ceiling of helium balloons, about fifty of us—volunteers, family, friends, and media—watched the
TV over the bar, waiting for the returns to come in. Nolan’s mother buzzed around the room in a purple dress, thanking every one and expressing confidence that the state of Missouri had chosen wisely. She looked better than I’d seen her since my
arrival
. Nolan’s father was being quieter, sipping his whiskey and studying the television.

Nolan had written his acceptance speech, and in my shirt pocket was a list of people he wanted to be sure to thank. Beer and wine flowed freely. On the bar were trays of food—deli
sandwiches
, a cheese platter, plenty of desserts—and coffee. We were hunkering down for a long night.

We needn’t have been. The polls closed at seven. At seven thirty, the stunningly pretty newscaster said:
And in the Twelfth District, Ed Cassidy successfully jumps into state politics with an easy victory over his young rival, Nolan Albright.

She flashed her perfect white teeth.

“So do you remember how the night ended?” Jeffrey asked me now.

I remembered Mrs. Albright kissing her son on the cheek and, thoroughly deflated, going off to bed. Mr. Albright walking over to his son, shaking his hand, and frowning.

“You lost,” he said, “but I suppose you did the best you could.”

“I don’t know,” Nolan replied. “I thought I did.”

His father went in the direction his mother had gone, and then others left, too, and then a handful of us headed up to our
defeated
candidate’s suite to watch the TV news and finish off
whatever
wine hadn’t already been consumed. Our numbers dwindled. Nolan clicked off the TV.

I have nothing
, he said, the melodrama of the inebriated.
It’s all over for me.

“Sure, I remember,” I said to Jeffrey now. “Nolan got drunk and kicked us out of his hotel suite.”

I didn’t see him until the following morning. Jeffrey, Evan, and I were having breakfast at the hotel restaurant around eight o’clock when the elevator doors opened and out he came,
looking
uncharacteristically disheveled. No morning run. He came
over and took the fourth seat. He picked up the menu and looked at it, though there was no need. Nolan always ate a bowl of
oatmeal
with a banana for breakfast.

The waitress came over. “Pancakes,” he said. “And a cheese omelet. And a Coke.”

“How’re you holding up?” I asked, when the waitress had gone away.

“My head is killing me.”

When the food came, he didn’t touch any of it. Just stirred the eggs around in his plate, sipped the Coke, then stood up and shook each of our hands. “I’m sorry, but I really need to get the hell out of here.” He dropped some bills on the table and left, and I didn’t see him again until the following spring, when we all met up for golf in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. By then he was back to his old self, and thoroughly optimistic about the next election two years hence—an election he’d go on to win
decisively
, and without my help.

“You’re leaving out something important,” Jeffrey said, “after he locked himself in his hotel suite.”

“What’s that?”

“He called my house.”

This didn’t make sense. “In California?”

“Of course.”

“But you were with us in Missouri.”

The look he gave me said,
No shit.

“He told her he loved her, Will. Three in the morning, and he wakes her out of a dead sleep and says he loves her.”

“No.”

“He told her he’s
always
loved her.”

“Jesus—when did she tell you about it?”

“When I came home. I’m about to go to bed after a full day of travel, and Sara mentions it like it’s no big deal.
Did you know that
Nolan Albright called me late last night?
As if I could possibly know. I almost threw up, hearing about it.”

“What did she say to him?”

“She told him to go to bed. I told her she should’ve told him to fuck off, but apparently she felt sorry for him because of how badly he’d gotten whipped in the election.” He looked out into the hallway, as if Nolan might’ve been standing there, listening this whole time. He lowered his voice. “You don’t
do
that, Will. You don’t phone your friend’s wife like that. Not after—”

“He was drunk. I’m not excusing it. But people say things when they’re drunk.”

“They tell the truth!
That’s
what people do when they’re drunk.”

“So what?” I said. “So he made a mistake. What do you care? You’re the one she married.”

His body seemed to be tensing up just thinking about it. His hands curled into fists. “Who did he think he was, huh? The Great Gatsby? Did he think he was some self-made big shot who could waltz in and steal my wife away?”

“Gatsby ended up dead in a swimming pool.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Served him right.”

“Come on, he was depressed. You were there. You saw it.”

“Still, that’s no excuse.”

“Isn’t it? Are you really going to sit here and claim you can’t understand how a depressed person might do something he’d later come to regret?”

We both looked over at Marie.

“Sara’s my
wife
,” Jeffrey said.

“Yes, that’s what makes it wrong. I see that.”

“It revealed a lot, is all I’m saying. I know you don’t like to think badly of anyone. That’s why I never told you any of this
before
. You like to have your little golf weekends and make insipid toasts and pretend we’re all still best friends. You pretend that
history doesn’t exist. But it does. And the truth is that Nolan tried to betray me that night, just like he betrayed me before.”

Ah. So that’s what this was all about. Not some election-night impropriety. No, this went back further, to matters I’d assumed were long settled.

“You don’t know for sure that Nolan ever betrayed you,” I said. When he shook his head, dismissing the notion, I said, “Come on, Jeffrey, you were the English major. You know that life and
literature
aren’t the same thing.”

I was about to say that we’d been through all this before, when Nolan returned to the studio carrying a large cardboard box.

“That electronics store down the street has excellent bargains,” he said, set the box down in the control room, and tossed me my keys.

The box said Magnavox.

“You bought a TV?” I asked.

“Had to. So we can watch the news.”

“Did anybody see you?” Jeffrey asked.

“Of course. But nobody’s looking for me. I’m invisible. Unlike you—jeez, sorry about your face. Is it broken?” The fresh air seemed to have done him good. Our predicament hadn’t changed any, but I was glad to see Nolan fresh again and no longer angry.

“You knocked a tooth loose,” Jeffrey said.

“Damn. Really sorry about that. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t’ve done it.” He held out his hand for Jeffrey to shake. Jeffrey hesitated.

“Oh, don’t be a baby,” I said. “Shake his goddamn hand and send him the dental bill later.”

Jeffrey shrugged. They shook hands, and then we went into the main recording room, where there was more space to set up the TV. As I expected, the reception was terrible. The TV had come with rabbit ears, though, and after carrying it around the
room from spot to spot, two New York stations finally began to reveal themselves—NBC and ABC—both distorted, but good enough.

Crime dramas on both stations. All that seemed to play on TV anymore, besides reality shows, were crime dramas. For a few minutes we sat on the floor and flipped between stations. We watched the badge-flashing, the interrogations, the rough arrests. At no point, however, were any of these programs interrupted for the real crime in progress. No words at the bottom of the screen informing crime-addicted viewers that an actual girl had gone missing.

“Jeffrey,” I said after a few minutes, “why doesn’t anybody seem to be looking for us? Do
you
have an explanation?”

“No,” he said. “None.”

“Why don’t you tell us exactly what went down at the Milk-
n-Bread
,” Nolan said.

Jeffrey watched the screen for another minute, then reached for the TV and muted it. “First of all,” he said, “you guys need to understand how fast it all happened. I’d planned to buy a thing of Tums. I was feeling really ill. And, no, it wasn’t the clams. Listen—Sara only told me about the affair two days ago. She said she had to tell me because … she’s
nearly
certain the baby’s mine, but … well, you get the idea. So, yeah, I’ve been feeling pretty fucked up. Anyway, there was an old lady in the store, and when she left I looked over at the register and noticed that the cashier and I were the only two people left. And maybe she looked a little like Sara—okay, I can see that now—but it wasn’t anything I thought too hard about. Believe me, I never in my life thought about robbing a store or kidnapping somebody, but it was like this moment opened up and it became doable. If that old lady had stayed it never could’ve happened. I just stood there at the register a moment, because I was sure somebody else
would walk into the store, or another employee would come in from some back room or the bathroom or wherever. But no. And right then I knew I could do it. You know how we’ve talked about how a good quarterback can see the whole field and know exactly how it’ll look a few seconds later? That’s how it felt. I saw the play come together, and I knew exactly what to do.”

I didn’t like the quarterback comparison. It meant that
alongside
whatever remorse he might now claim to be feeling, he was still feeling the rush, the residual amazement at what he’d done.

“All right, Joe Montana,” Nolan said, “describe the play.”

“She rang up the Tums, and I handed her some money, but the instant the register opened, I looked out the glass door and said, ‘Oh my God, she fell,’ or something like that. Marie must have known the woman, because she gasped and said, ‘Mrs. Tyler?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and then she ran for the door.”

“Without shutting the register?” I asked.

“I made it all sound really urgent,” he said. “So yeah. I leaned over the counter and grabbed a handful of bills from the register and stuffed them in my pocket. Marie didn’t even notice—she was already opening the door to go outside, so I hurried up and went with her, and then when we were out there I took her arm and said, ‘Hurry, follow me,’ and that’s exactly what she did. She must’ve thought your car was the old lady’s car right up until the last second. It was dark and rainy, and it all happened so fast, I don’t think she knew what was going on until she was already in the car. I know I didn’t.” He looked at us, as if trying to gauge our reaction. “It sounds really calculated, but that’s not how it felt. It felt as if I hadn’t even decided to do it until it was already done.”

I thought I understood better now why the authorities might not have been notified. Marie had been alone in the store. She’d come outside willingly. There was nothing to see and no one to see it.

“But here’s what I still don’t get,” I said. “Her shift runs noon to eight. I looked at my watch. “It’s now after ten. So what
happened
when the new employee showed up at eight and didn’t see Marie? And what about her grandmother? Wouldn’t she be
worried
by now?”

“Two hours late coming home?” Jeffrey said. “That isn’t so long. Think about when you were a teenager and—”

“Stop.” Nolan was staring at me.

“What is it?” I asked.

His gaze stayed on me. “How do you know when her shift started?”

“Because she told me,” I said, feeling a little proud that I was the one she’d confided in. “She was scheduled from noon to eight, and at eight she was supposed to punch out and go home to her grandmother.”

Nolan was shaking his head. “No, something’s not right. We need to have a chat with Little Red Riding Hood. Right now.”

I glanced in her direction. Like me, she’d been devouring one cigarette after another. “Am I missing something?” I asked.

“Yeah, Will, you are. She’s been bullshitting us.”