Isabel interrupted her: “There’s only one issue today… Close-up. And,” she said testily, “the only comment I’ve got to offer is ‘no comment’.”
Even good-humoured Father Lizewski at St Hyacinth’s was stressed about the program. Leaning out from his pulpit, he blessed Isabel, joking in a preposterous mock-New-York-Jewish accent, “Like it couldn’t hurt she’s a Catholic?” When the chuckles settled, the priest looked out over the congregation and said solemnly, “What took God a lifetime of Isabel’s hard work won’t be undone in one 30-minute TV show.”
Isabel was moved by the emotion that pulsed through the church. News broadcasts would replay the moment all day. When the service ended, swirls of well-meaning parishioners engulfed her.
“I am Democrat,” said one woman who squeezed Isabel as if she were still wringing the washing water out of a bed sheet. “But November come and I vote for you. My whole family vote for you, good lady,” and she presented Isabel with a foot-long knobbly pink kolbasa sausage. “I make this special for you.”
Isabel smiled and took it, handing it to one of her minders. She had tried the fatty sausage once, as often as anyone would if they didn’t have to.
The priest pressed a set of rosaries into her hand. “You might want these tonight,” he said and softly kissed her cheek. Isabel wasn’t much of a Catholic after she left the trailer park, but she thanked him graciously and slipped the beads into her jacket pocket. As the car shot off to the picnic, she pulled them out and held one of the rosary beads tight, recalling from when she was young the Glorious Mysteries, the first of which was the Resurrection. Well, here was hoping. And praying.
The high-security, deep blue Chrysler SUV that had been organised for the day was brightened up with magnetic stick-ons of her emblematic red roses, one on each door, standard fit-out for a campaign vehicle.
Her phone rang.
“I’m on my way to Detroit,” Gregory said. “We’ve got nothing. No one’s talking… no backgrounders… no off-the-records. No ‘sounds like.’ No ‘hypothetically speaking.’ No ‘what ifs.’ We’ve asked everyone, tried to pull in favours, pressed, cajoled, whatever. Nothing. These people don’t seem to care that they’re playing with the most important election in the world.”
“Don’t we just watch tonight, knit our eyebrows and say, hmm, that’s interesting, we’ll get back to you?”
“Not if they whack the ball right out of the field, we can’t.”
“Have you called Orrin Hatch’s people?”
Gregory’s silence told her she’d insulted him by even asking.
“What did they say?”
They hadn’t been able to think of anything. “Here’s the thing,” said Gregory. “Scenario one is that this is all opportunist media hype and we’ve got nothing to worry about—about as unlikely as al-Qaeda cutting off their own heads—in which case we just go ahead with the debate prep; or… scenario two, whatever they’ve got is huge and we are… you know…”
“Fucked?”
Gregory had never heard Isabel use the f-word and after several empty seconds, he coughed. “Ah… yes, that. In which case, you and I and the team should ditch the debate and go out and get, well, ah, you know, pickled.”
“I’m not a ‘get pickled’ sort of gal.”
He didn’t think she was a “fucked” sort of gal either, at least not until a moment ago, but there was a lot of pressure on her right now. “Yeah, getting drunk isn’t classy.” He thought of The Book. “If it’s going to be the end, not that I’m resigned to that possibility, we will stand tall and with grace. Who knows, maybe there’ll be a next time. Or maybe not. Whatever. So, if it does all turn to, er, shit, then we call in the media, including Close-up, of course…”
“To the church fellowship hall?”
“Exactly… out there in shabby real-town. We say, you know, no hard feelings… they were doing their jobs… we had no idea…”
“But we need one, dammit.”
Isabel saw her team was fighting the last war, not this one. They’d discussed the need to create other options often enough but if a different approach was needed, it looked like Isabel would have to find it herself.
25
ISABEL’S VAN PULLED up for her debate prep a little late. “I had some last minute things at the hotel,” she said as she walked into the secret location and joined her entourage around the large flat screen TV that Gregory had arranged to be set up. They were holed up in a vintage Detroit fellowship hall, last painted at least twenty years earlier, with quaint white gables and greyed, peeling clapboard walls. Any heritage value the building once had was lost on those present. They were here to practise the debate, but first they’d watch Close-up.