Mark Costello - Big If

It was two blocks from the hotel to the square. They cut across a parking lot. Mounted cops cantered past. It had been raining off and on since the downpour of the morning. Now the rain had stopped, though it felt more like a pause than a stop.

“Go somewhere last night?” asked Gretchen.

The tone was chatty, but Vi was not deceived. Gretchen often started chatty, got her facts established, toyed with you a bit, before exploding.

Vi said, “Yes I did. I went to see my brother. I told you all this yesterday.”

“You asked me. I said no. Or did I hallucinate?”

“No, I asked you.”

“And what did I say?”

Vi said, “Just get it over with. Rip me ten vacation days. Fuck it, take ’em all. Dock my pay, hose me on my bonus, stick me on the ropelines until Christmas, I don’t care. I’m sick of the cat-and-mouse. Every morning I get up, dress myself, dress Bobbie, then convince her that she’s not going to die today, and only then can we leave the goddamn room. I caught O’Teen in the hallway reading about pandas. It’s crazy, Gretchen. We’re all going crazy.”

Gretchen nodded and they walked along. She said, “What’s your brother’s name?”

Vi said, “What do you care?”

“Is it Jojo? It is Freddy? Is it Nick?”

Vi said, “It’s Jojo. Jojo Asplund. Don’t fuck around with me.”

“Well okay,” said Gretchen, “here’s to good old Jojo. I rip you two vacation days. Next time I give an order, Vi, obey it for me, huh?”

They passed through a choke point onto the secured area behind the prefab stage. The stage was ten yards wide, plywood and tube steel, covered and enclosed on three sides by a canvas canopy, stripes of green and white, like a wedding tent. Hanging pieces of the tent were flapping in the breeze, the big sides filling like a sail, then going slack and sucking in, with each shift in wind. There were folding metal chairs against the back wall, half-filled with local dignitaries running through their speeches, some mouthing words in practice (eyes closed, it looked like prayer), others having sudden thoughts and scribbling on index cards. A podium stood out alone at the stage’s edge, like a diving board — beyond it was a drop-off, space, and then the crowd.

Gretchen was conferring with a Portsmouth Parks Department supervisor. The stage had stairs at both ends, and Gretchen was explaining to the Parks guy why this wouldn’t fly. They would bring the VP in by motorcade behind the stage when the rally was in progress, keeping his moments of exposure to a minimum. When he was introduced by the second or third speaker (Vi hadn’t seen a program, but there were rarely fewer than three introductions at these rallies), balloons would be released as the agents walked the VP in a cordon a short distance through the crowd and up the right-side stairs. He would give his speech and exit by the same route. This made the stairs on the left Gretchen’s blind side, in effect — not a blind side really, but she would have to mass her agents on the right, and she didn’t need an extra access point. The Parks guy, bellyaching, said that the left-side stairs were bolted to the post supports, and he wasn’t sure he had the tools to remove them. He started throwing around Parks Department terminology, like anybody gives a damn, Vi thought. Gretchen, who was paid to flatten all resistance to the Dome, told the guy that if the stairs weren’t gone in three minutes, she’d call her welders, have the stairs cut off and delivered to his office in a heap. The Parks guy bought the threat, apparently thinking that Gretchen traveled with a team of metalworkers. He hurried off the stage to find his tools.

Vi looked out at the crowd. The rally, like the morning jog, was a high-threat event. Outdoor operations in a city center were generally bad. Shops and restaurants, offices and parking lots — the Service couldn’t freeze all life for a mile square. In theory, they could do it. They had done it for the president in Pakistan (Islamabad a ghost town for two hours), but for that you’d need a thousand agents and a junta for a government. They would do as much for Market Square as you could do in such a place, overflights suspended from the county airport, the Coast Guard on patrol in Portsmouth Harbor, traffic detoured, a second gunship added for the morning. The troopers had the choke points, four of them arrayed around the square, designated red (north), blue (east), green (by the church), and gold (by the stage). The comm techs were on standby with the jammers; cops were working down the rooftops (checking each, posting guards to keep them sealed); a sniper team was climbing to the steeple of the church.

A yellow rent-a-truck backed into the area behind the stage. Two men in jeans and jeans jackets jumped from the cab and went to work unloading the balloons, four great rafts of balloons held together in four floating fish-net bags. Vi heard bluegrass music from the speakers. It was a cue. They were ready to begin.

The first speaker at the rally,the warmup to the warmup, introduced herself to sputtering applause as the state representative from Greenland-Belvedere, a straddle district down the shore. She thanked the sponsors of the rally, her good friend Tommy Monahan (the county party chair), the office of the mayor, and the Portsmouth Parks Department. She was swinging into her remarks when the PA system died, a shriek of feedback, followed by dead air.

Jens and Peta heard the PA die as they left Moss Properties a hundred yards down the square. They crossed the street together, walking side by side, close enough to hold hands, though they didn’t.

Jens said, “How was volunteering?”

Peta said, “A clusterfuck. Someone owes me major chits. You vote already?”

Jens said, “This morning.”

“Correctly, I assume.”

“I couldn’t vote for either of them, Pet.”

Jens explained what he had done in the booth, how he had stared at the buttons by the names, trying to decide between the VP and the senator, and how, finally, unable to decide, he had pulled the big iron lever back without pressing either button.

Peta said, “What lever? I’m confused.”

Jens started to explain again, but Peta cut him off. “Just tell me, did you vote or not?”

Jens said, “I voted, but for no one. I don’t believe in either of those guys. If I picked one, I’d just be going the motions. It wouldn’t mean a thing.”

Peta said, “So instead you stood there and basically wasted an hour of your day. I’m sorry, Jens, but that’s just sad .”

“Sad how?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No — sad how? I can’t go the motions , Pet.”

“Yes,” said Peta, looking down the square.

They were heading toward the new tabouli restaurant, which had eleven different coffees on its menu, counting the decafs. Jens had planned to wait until they were comfy in a booth, then have a short, important conversation with his wife. He was going to describe the conversation with Vi the night before, and with Meredith this morning, and how he felt certain now that his slump, his rough patch, was coming to an end. He had told her something like this several times before, but this time he was confident.

They got the PA up again, and the woman from the straddle district introduced the next introducer, a veteran state senator from Eatontown, who grabbed the mike and in a boomed voice thanked the party chair, Tommy Monahan (and his lovely wife Irene), the rep from Greenland-Belvedere (for her gracious introduction), and God, for the break in the weather.

“Fold up your umbrellas, folks,” he said, “because I think I see the sun!”

This mention of the sun brought the first real clapping of the rally, though the sun was nowhere visible.