Neal Stephenson - Interface

Mary Catherine had the seat closest to the lecturn. She was wearing brand new clothes purchased for her by her personal shopper at Marshall Field. The personal shopper and the clothes were both paid for by Cy Ogle. The personal shopper was a fifty-five-year-old Sunday school teacher and had chosen the clothing accordingly. Except, that is, for the underwear, which Mary Catherine had picked out herself, and which probably would have gotten her in big trouble if she got into a car accident.

It had already become obvious that for purposes of the campaign, Mary Catherine would serve as a kind of surrogate wife. This was an awkward notion, to say the least, and as she sat there boiling and sweating under the July sun she made up her mind that she was going to have to have a talk with Ogle about it. The fact that she was now acting as a secret agent for Mel Meyer made it a little more palatable.

James was next to her, very handsome in a new suit that had obviously been chosen by a personal shopper of his own. She hadn't seen much of him lately, which was probably a good thing. His book project seemed to have added years to his age - in a good sense. Somehow he looked taller, leaner, more confident. He looked like a grown-up.

The remainder of the front two rows was completely occupied with family. The Cozzano family, after a dodgy first couple of generations during which a lot of people had fallen victim to war of influenza, had begun to multiply ferociously during the last twenty years. The distribution of ages up here on the podium - a few oldsters, a few more middle-agers, and half a million kids - was a visible demonstration of the exponential growth concept. In addition, her mother's family, a prosperous clan of blue-eyed midwestern engineers, had shown up in division strength. The Cozzanos still had deep roots in the Chicago Italian community. A lot of them were here. And so were a bunch of Meyers.

It was the biggest family reunion ever. She had kissed a hundred people on her way to her seat. She must have half an inch of powder caked up on each cheek from bussing all those old ladies. Roughly one thousand people had come up to her and told her that she looked beautiful.

Mary Catherine was glad that this campaign hadn't yet gotten so slick and controlled that kids had been banished from these big events. The podium was an absolute riot. A little toddler girl wandered around behind Cozzano with her diaper peeking out from under her dress. A Domenici boy and a Meyer boy, both wearing suits that were a size too small, jumped and ducked around the rows of chairs, sniping at each other with squirtguns, occa­sionally picking off an old lady by mistake. Some of the mothers with young kids had folded up a bunch of chairs, tossed them off the platform, spread out blankets, and set up an impromptu day-care center. With their wide-brimmed hats and their spreading skirts, all in light hues of yellow and white, they looked like a field of daffodils, the toddlers running around from one to the other like fat little bees. Inspired by the bleacher crowd, the extended family up here on the podium had become rowdy. A dozen ex-Bears had showed up and were seated in a massive phalanx at the very back of the podium, where their shoulders wouldn't block anyone else's view; they had started passing a hip flask very early and were now beginning to lead the podium crowd in cheers.

It was a blast. Mary Catherine was having a great time. She could hardly hear a word Dad was saying. All of the kids in all of those extended families looked up to her, she was like a goddess, role model, and honorary big sister to dozens. She had the special status accorded to big girls who know how to drive, are skilled at kissing owies, and aren't afraid to throw and catch a football. Consequently she was visited by a never-ending stream of perfectly dressed-up little kids who came up to her to pay homage, admire her dress, show her their owies, give her presents, have their shoes tied, display important baseball cards, and ask for directions back to their mommies.

Consequently she had no idea what was going on when, suddenly, the entire crowd - bleachers, podium, everywhere - suddenly jumped to its feet and burst forth in wild exaltation. Ten thousand helium balloons launched themselves from the end zone and headed for Mars. Tremendous barrages of firecrackers went off all over the place, releasing skeins of acrid smoke into the air. Boat horns screeched all over the place as if all the world's seagulls were dying at once, the podium reverberated with the thumping bass drums of the marching band, and from somewhere - a helicopter, maybe? - a thunderhead of confetti descended upon the scene, so dense that for a few moments you could hardly see your own hand. Mary Catherine instinctively looked to her father, who was just visible through the confetti as a glowing outline, limned by the television lights, blurred by the red-white-and-blue blizzard.

It seemed like he was a thousand miles away from her. Not a human being, but an electronic figment conjured up from the computers of a media laboratory. Ronald Reagan had been an actor. At times, William A. Cozzano had begun to seem like a special effect.

Then the blizzard of confetti cleared and he was just standing there, letting the waves of sound roll over him, and he turned towards her, his eye searching through the faces, the smoke, the streamers and balloons, and he found her, caught her eye, and smiled a smile that was for her and for her alone.

She smiled back. She knew that both of them were thinking about Mom.

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She didn't even know what was going on, really. But she wanted to be with Dad, and so she walked across the podium and climbed the steps to the raised lectern. He caught her up with one arm around her waist as she reached the top step and crushed her to his side. The noise level went up by another few decibels, if that was possible, and she did what she was supposed to do: she looked not at her father, but out on to the crowd, into the battery of lenses, and waved. She felt terrified and forlorn, but with Dad holding her up she knew she'd get through it. It was so good to have him back.

A huge banner had unfurled from the top of the bleachers and it said, COZZANO FOR PRESIDENT. This was not the first time that Mary Catherine had seen those words, but when she saw them up there, ten feet high, on the Tuscola High School bleachers, she knew it was for real. And she finally realized what had touched off all of this tumult: Dad had done it. He had announced. He was running for president.

The rest of the day was completely out of control. It was like being stuck in the middle of a riot in which no one got hurt. It was like the biggest, rowdiest, most drunken wedding of all time, to the tenth power; and instead of a single photographer telling everyone what to do, there was an army of photographers. So many flashes went off in Mary Catherine's eyes that she began to see things that weren't there, as if the electronic flash was a gateway to a hidden dimension. The rally developed into an open-air hugging, kissing, handshaking, and sweating festival and, assisted by shuttle buses, gradually migrated across town to the Tuscola City Park, where half of the pigs in the Midwest were revolving on spits inside giant, rusted, smoking, portable barbecue pits. Green fiberglass portable toilets were lined up in ranks at one end of the park, like ceremonial guards at a coronation. A linear mile of picnic tables had been set up with red-white-and-blue tablecloths and loaded up with lemonade, iced tea, punch, water, coffee, and beer.

Mary Catherine made her way through all of this one step at a time, stooping every yard or so to greet someone new. After the first thousand or so people, she completely lost her ability to remember faces. A nice lady came up and shook her hand and chatted with her for a while; Mary Catherine had her pegged as her old Sunday School teacher until she realized that this woman was, in fact, the wife of a Supreme Court justice. She said hello to Althea Coover, DeWayne Coover's granddaughter and an old college mate of hers. As the hours went on, she saw a great many people whom she recognized, but oddly enough they were people she had never met before. They were movie stars, professional athletes, senators, and musicians. She knew their faces as well as she knew the faces of her own aunts and uncles, and so it didn't seem strange at all to see them wandering around Tuscola, to see the Senator from Wyoming swapping jokes with the coach of the Bulls.