Primary Colors by Joe Klein Page A

Lucille. He's all over her. He's eating breakfast. She comes down, pointedly picks another table. He gets up, moves his runny, yucky, half-eaten eggs to her table. She says, 'Eggs, Sporken? Cholesterol.' Yikes. That woman is like a figment of George Romero's imagination."
    "Who?"
    "The zombie movie hack. Brilliant hack."
    "Oh." I looked at her, and couldn't resist the obvious--her candor demanded it. "Again? Get into your pants again?"
    "Richard?" She laughed. "Last year in Atlantic City. He was so nutty Election Day, had to do something to calm him down. We'd been through it by then, he'd brought that suckball--talk about zombies--he'd brought that suckball zombie prick, Jeff Millar, all the way back, and then the asshole choked in the last debate. But the debate is on against a gazillion points, y'know? Like Roseanne and Sex Lives o f t he Rich and Famous--so maybe no one was watching. Anyway, we're really sweating the last twenty-four hours. We get the final tracking at midnight, and we're holding. We're both so relieved that--well, you know how it is in campaigns: indifferent sex, great companionship." I had stretched out on the leather couch below the giant photograph of the state university football stadium, filled to capacity with people dressed in orange, two tiny teams on the field. It seemed an entirely bizarre artifact; but, then, the governor's office was filled with bad local crafts--cutesy, calico, primitive stuff. "So," she continued. "I'm stuck here. I'm not going back to those lunatics at that hotel. You wants catcha movie?"
    "This is America," I said. "No movies in town. You have to mall it." "Any video stores downtown?" She was up, rousting about the governor's closet for a phone book, then gone to the outer office and back, flipping through the yellow pages. "Got a couple nearby. Look, let's see if they're open, you got a VCR at your place, right? We can hang out--"
    "No, I have things--"
    "Oh come oti, Henry. Let's lose a couple of hours, huh? It's New Year's Eve. We're out here in America. You don't have a date or anything?"
    I shook my head no before I thought about it. She wasn't going to let it go. "Okay," I said. "But let me make a phone call first." "Personal, huh?" She caught everything. "Okay. You do that. I'll go outside, call around these stores, see who's open."
    I made the call. Told Mother I'd be out there with the governor in early February, and that she and Arnie should buy tickets for the fundraiser. Arnie got on. He and I had never had a tense step-relationship. For one thing, we'd never lived in the same house--I was pretty much grown before he turned up; for another, he had the genius salesman's gift, which was no gift, just an easy, inherent kindness. "So I'm gonna waste my money on Stanton?" he said. "They say he fucks around." "He's a good man, Arnie. You'd like him."
    "I didn't say fucking around is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. It's basic. Like your position on abortion or something. You want a guy who's got juice, right? A human being." Good old Arnie: never disagreeable. "You should only work for guys who fuck around, Henry."
    It had stopped raining. The storm had broken apart in the sky; heavy clouds were interspersed with sharp patches of deep blue. The sun was in and out. Daisy looked profoundly unglamorous, the hood of her nondescript sweatshirt up from under a blue down jacket, covering her mouth and eyebrows; only dark eyes and her stubby nose, quickly pink in the cold, showed. It was suddenly warmer whenever the sun poked through. "The planes may be going soon," I said hopefully.
    "Third Street, you assume would be three streets from the capitol, right?" she said.
    Right. "I know this store," I said. "They only have garbage." "Good," she said.
    "Good?"
    "Well, what do you want, Henry? Boudu Saved from Drowning? Let's see something great and crappy and kinetic."
    "You pick it, then," I said. The store was a combination smoke shop, newsstand and videos. I checked