“I forgot to tel you guys,” she said. “Last night, I had the most graphic, realistic, and extremely satisfying sex dream about the Candidate.”

“Wel , it looks like we know who the next Monica Lewinsky wil be,” Shannon said. She laughed and no one else did. Dan looked at her with his mouth open. “What?” she asked. “She can talk about the next president of the United States giving her an orgasm and I can’t make a Lewinsky joke?”

Charlotte looked down in pretend embarrassment. “Oh my God, ” Shannon said. “You brought it up. With your boyfriend sitting right there.”

Shannon meant to point at Chet, but he was closer than she thought and she ended up poking him on the cheek. He jumped in surprise. Shannon got the feeling he hadn’t been listening to anything they’d been saying.

They finished their enchiladas quietly, with pleasant, bland conversation. On the way home, Dan reprimanded Shannon. “I can’t believe you said that,” he told her. “Charlotte was pretty upset.”

“Oh, was she?” Shannon asked. “Do you think that Chet and I were upset that we went to dinner with our significant others that we never see and al they talked about was the random people they work with on the campaign? People that we don’t know and have never met. It was so boring. And it was rude.” Shannon’s eyes started to tear up and she sniffled. Dan let his shoulders drop.

“I’m sorry, Shannon,” he said. She shrugged and he grabbed her arm until she looked at him. “I mean it. I know this is hard for you and I real y appreciate your support. You know that, right? You know how much that means to me.” Shannon shrugged again and let him hug her.

“We shouldn’t have gone to dinner with them,” she said. “That’s not fair. You’re leaving tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” Dan agreed. “It should have just been us. Charlotte suggested it and I didn’t know what else to do. She’s having a hard time with Chet. I’m not sure they’re going to work it out. I feel real y bad for them.”

“Yeah,” Shannon said. “How sad for them.”

Shannon dreamt of the Candidate. She dreamt that they ran into each other at the grocery store and laughed about buying the same pasta sauce.

“You like Ragú too?” Shannon said to him, and they laughed and clutched arms. She dreamt that he came over for dinner and she told him how he was making her life so hard. He smiled. He shook her hand. He talked about hope and belief and getting fired up! Shannon awoke from these dreams feeling exhausted and confused, until she noticed that she’d left the TV on CNN. They were showing a tape of the Candidate at some campaign stop. He was smiling and frowning, laughing and tilting his head to show concern. Shannon looked at him closely while he talked and gestured. Did he know? Did he know that he had stolen her boyfriend? Did he know that he was ruining her whole life plan? Did he know that he was making her miserable?

He finished the speech and a Stevie Wonder song came blaring out of the speakers. He clapped his hands toward the audience, gave a serious look, and then smiled and went to shake hands. He swayed his shoulders and hips to the song. She decided that the answer was no. He didn’t know any of it.

Everyone asked about Dan; people at work, friends, family, even the neighbors wanted to know what he was up to. “How’s he doing?” they would ask. “How’s the feeling on the campaign? Do we have this one wrapped up?”

Shannon knew they were al nervous. They were scared that they’d wind up with an old man and a crazy-booted gun lover in the White House. “It’s going great,” she would tel them. “Everyone’s feeling positive.”

“But what about this Muslim rumor?” they would insist. “Do you think we can shake this? What about the flag pin?” they asked. Shannon looked at their wrinkled eyebrows and tried to reassure them, but she barely had anything left.

As the election went on, the rumors got nasty. People tried to paint the Candidate as anti-American, finding incriminating old footage of a reverend he knew, and playing it on what seemed like a twenty-four-hour loop. When this news broke, Shannon didn’t talk to Dan for a week. He was jumping from event to event, trying to make people forget they’d ever heard the words “God damn America.”

When Dan final y did cal , it was in the middle of the night and Shannon wasn’t sure if she was dreaming.

“I just wanted to say hi,” he said. He didn’t sound like he knew she’d almost put out an Amber Alert on him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just tired. I keep thinking they can’t do it again. They can’t steal another election from us.”

“That’s good,” Shannon said. She was stil half caught in sleep.

“They can’t take this away,” he said. “The Candidate deserves this. We need him. The country needs him.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Shannon said. “They can’t take it away,” she repeated.

“That’s right,” he said. “And if they do, we’re moving to Canada.”

One evening in early fal , Shannon walked the dog up Broadway with her friend Lauren. The air was starting to turn and the wind made Shannon shiver just a little. The two of them were deciding where to get a drink, and Shannon was trying to hurry the dog along, pul ing him past hydrants he wanted to sniff, when a smiling boy with a clipboard stepped in front of them. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you have a minute for the Democratic candidate?”