Margaret was quiet and still in the hotel room rattling her fingernails over the writing table; a tap-tapping of polish on shellac. The lights were dim, though it was sunny outside and the weather quite pleasant, and the curtains pulled shut. I could see her eyes pendulate from the blank screen of the television to the locked mini-bar.
“I want to see it,” she said flatly.
“Ma puce,” I told her from where I stood at the wardrobe, ironing shirts, “There is nothing to see. Not yet. The returns, they don’t begin until six. It is hardly past noon.”
“I want a drink.”
“We said ‘nothing’ until at least ten precincts reporting, ma cherie,” I sighed. I had called Frank Belloc, combat pyschologist, and retained his private audience this evening, in case of the worst. Only he could talk poor Margaret down, in the case the junior senator lost by less than five percent.
“Tell me again,” she said, the words like tired coal cars creaking from the mouth, “What do we need to win?”
“Oh, now I don’t know,” I said, spritzing my white dress shirt with sizing, which sizzled under the hot metal. “I think eight percent is more than just a mandate to move on, no? Ten percent margin or better and the delegate leader will have to make serious considerations for a joint ticket; certainly the superdelegates will see the inevitability of it.”
There was a sigh and the continued rapping of fingernails over the wood of the table.
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