Mama T's was filled with small children, squirming in their parents’ laps as they slurped worms of spaghetti, and men and women in thick coats cracking loaves of crusty bread and pulling off great white hunks as they turned up their heads to keep track of that night's basketball game. The flocked walls were speckled with tea towels of Mt. Etna and the Strait of Messina, and graying photographs, illegibly signed, from Jack Nicholson, Jerry Vale, Spiro Agnew, Dolly Parton, and Frank Sinatra (who, according to local recollection, preferred a more posh spot nearby on Taylor Street—“Better broads,” explained Terry Taliaferro, who ran the restaurant now—but sent his guards and gophers over to Mama T's).

Rita, Rula, Muriel, and Virginie were already seated. Sunny saw plates of crackling sausages and glistening red and green peppers, stuffed shells spilling white drifts of ricotta, and a yellowy pillow of eggplant parmigiana. A young man with buttery brown hair imperfectly bunched into a ponytail and a claret corduroy jacket above his blue jeans and boots stood up and extended his hand.

“Diego Pomeroy” he said.

“Yes,” was all Sunny could manage. The name was familiar, but only recently. Sunny had begun to hear it emerge from Rita and Rula's detonating giggles, as if it was the name of a new pop star that Sunny couldn't possibly be expected to know. Sunny couldn't tell from their inadvertent accounts if one or the other of his daughters intrigued Diego the most; or if, as Sunny feared, both were some incomparable dual parcel to fuel an adolescent desire. For the moment, he was slightly mollified by the impression that the girls seemed to run in packs with their friends. The pride of the pack would deal with Diego if he threatened to reduce their circle.

A warm older woman with strawberry curls brought over Sunny's accustomed favorite, spaghetti with red pepper and brown curls of minced garlic blistered in olive oil. He inhaled the steam and twirled several strands on a fork.

“Remember when we used to come here as kids?” said Rula. “We'd stand on the chair and slurp noodles.” She smacked her lips in loud, happy recollection. “We had contests to see who could slurp up the longest strand.”

“They were noodles then, not pasta,” added Rita.

“We'd get tomato splotches on our clothes,” Rula remembered. “Back on the street, people would gasp. They looked like blood. Pappaji taught us to say, ‘Jus’ spisghetti, jus’ spisghetti.’”

“A cover story to deceive the authorities,” said Sunny.

“Pappaji,” said Rita, “tell the Santa Claus story.”

Each year during the Christmas season, the mayor spent a well-publicized couple of hours zipped into a red suit (no stuffing required) to play Santa Claus from a high-backed seat installed at the center of Daley Plaza. The mayor's seasonal throne was surrounded by a secular array of illuminated candy canes, reindeer, and glittering evergreens shipped in from Poland, Sweden, Lithuania, and Puerto Rico (the Tabebuia haemantha, which Sunny had not previously known to exist, and suspected had been cultivated only to assist the city's civic holiday celebrations).

Each alderman got to recommend five children from their ward to take a turn on the mayor's lap. Press coverage was extensive. So staffers from the mayor's office carefully pre-interviewed the youngsters to exclude any deemed likely to ask, “Can you find my daddy?” or “Santa, can you bring me some crack cocaine?”

“As the daughters of an alderman, Rula and Rita were preapproved,” Sunny explained. “Anyway, there was a story going on then—”

“A scandal,” amended Rita.

“Yes,” Sunny allowed the revision. “Beyer and Beyer. An insurance firm. The mayor was accused of steering city business to the firm through one of their agents, who was the son of the president of the county board.”

“Big commissions,” Rula remembered.

“You should serve on a grand jury someday,” said Sunny. “The story was on the news every night. ‘Beyer and Beyer, Beyer and Beyer.’ Every day, you'd hear the question, ‘Mr. Mayor, what about Beyer and Beyer?’ It was the mayor's first term. You were—”

“Seven and five,” Sunny's daughters answered before he could turn completely around in his seat.

“So they settle onto his lap,” Sunny continued. “Two happy little girls in red winter coats. This big man smiling down. So the mayor says to them both, ‘My gosh, we have a couple of beauties here. Look like their mother, I'm pleased to observe. Sometimes God throws a pair of sixes in the roll of genetic dice. Not a drop of Daddy to blemish these two little innocent faces.’”

Sunny thought Diego seemed impressed by his deft mimicry of the mayor's mellow Old Granddad voice. He hoped it made the young man wonder, “How will he imitate me?”

“So the mayor turns back to the girls,” continued Sunny. “He says, ‘Lovely ladies, what can I do for you?’” And Rita and Rula—both of them, I swear—blurt out at the same time, ‘What about Beyer and Beyer, Mr. Mayor? What about Beyer and Beyer?’”

The table laughed so explosively—forks ringing, plates bouncing— that people turned around, craned their heads and shifted legs of their chairs; a score of the Bull's game was drowned out. Rita flopped the folds of a white napkin over her head, as if to hide, and Rula put her head behind the wicker breadbasket. Diego turned back to Sunny.

“So when the afternoon was over—we had some hot chocolate; we had some cookies—we were brought backstage where the mayor was removing his boots and red suit. His cottony beard was hanging off one ear, so he could smoke a cigar. ‘Sunny I have been bitten in the bosom by an asp,’ he said. And now I have been bitten in the ass by the daughters of my bosom friend.’”

“Bosom—what a comical word,” said Rita. “Whenever I use it, I tell people that the mayor taught it to me.”

“When—why—do you use it?” asked Sunny, but his daughters had already swiveled in their seats toward Diego Pomeroy.

“Whatever happened?” asked Diego.

“Precisely nothing,” said Sunny. “The mayor thought it was hilarious. He told the story himself.”

“That year, he gave us bicycles,” Rula remembered. “Anyway.”

“Or to keep you quiet,” said Sunny.

“I mean what happened with Beyer and Beyer?” said Diego, and Sunny, who could feel a charred shard of garlic snuggle in a groove between two front teeth, snuck his small finger behind his napkin.

“Also nothing. Stern editorials, vows to investigate. In the end, no case.”

“Fascinating, Mr. Roopini,” said Diego. His ginger ponytail was beginning to unfurl, and fan out from behind his neck. “I tell Rula and Rita, ‘How lucky you are. Some scandal breaks—you've had dinner at their house, you've played in the bathtub with their kids.’”

“Are you interested in politics, Diego,” asked Sunny, pointedly attaching the boy's first name.

“Oh, plenty,” he answered quickly, pumping his head up and down. “I just don't know if I believe in the utility of electoral politics.”

“Yes. Well that probably makes fifty of us.”

“Our mother hated politics,” Rula said, throwing the words onto the table like a splash of water into a hot skillet. “Or was it just politicians? Except for Pappaji, of course,” she said after a long—too long— pause. But Diego had a background of good manners.

“I'm sure it's a daily battle, sir,” he said quickly. “For a man of integrity to resist sordid compromise.”

“Well, that lets me off the hook,” said Sunny. “What interests you, Diego?” he asked suddenly. “What do you think you'd like to do?”

The young man leaned in across his plate and lowered his voice.

“I'm torn.”

“Between?”

“Becoming a teacher of autistic children. Or working in an AIDS hospice in Congo. Or …” He stabbed the last brick of eggplant parmi-giana with a fork, and lifted it over Rita's plate of linguine with red devil shrimp. “Or getting my MBA at Wharton and become an international financier.”

“Diego is a junior at the Latin School,” Rita explained. “We met at a Ghost Trackers meetup.”

“I was just there to see who else came,” said Diego.

“Us, too,” said Rula.

“Well, I hope you have the chance to do all of that and more,” said Sunny. He put a hand across the table on Diego's folded hands and excused himself to visit the bar.

“I have to handle a few phone calls,” he explained. By the time Sunny had turned and taken just three steps away from the table, he heard teenaged laughter behind him. Terry had a Rémy Martin waiting for him below the White Sox banner, ice pinging as it melted in the short, thick glass.

“VSOP,” said Terry. “A step up, like you've taken this week. And because you may need it.”

“Playing the fool for my daughters?” he asked. “The boy's not so bad.”

“I mean your friend,” said Terry Taliaferro, raising his eyebrows toward the television screen as he spritzed something into a glass.

The ten o'clock news had come on. Linas Slavinskas's carved red apple face filled the screen. Letters blared, “An Exclu-Two Report!” A video came on, in dim, grainy colors. A voice explained that it was a new bar on Western Avenue in the 12th Ward. There were hazy shots of Alderman Slavinskas, in one of his buttery cashmere jackets, a camel topcoat flagging his forearm, and an opulent magenta swash swirled around his neck, leaning over a polished bar to chat with a smoldering (even as seen, or especially as seen, from behind) flame-haired bartender. Her voice was gently flavored with the south, like a bourbon cookie. A small circle of light shone on a white envelope she had placed in the alderman's hand, her fingers lingering.

BARTENDER: “This is something to thank you for all of your
time and trouble, alderman.”

ALDERMAN SLAVINSKAS: “It's no trouble. I always have time
for you, gorgeous.”

A solemn, resonant reporter blinked snow from his eyes from in front of the bar and explained that the Good Government Association of Illinois was the clandestine owner. They called the bar the Oasis and wired it with hidden cameras and concealed microphones. They deliberately installed faulty ventilation and water pump systems to draw citations, so the Good Government investigators could document the many colorful corruptions with which a bar owner was required to comply. The bartender was a law student, Alison Parker Belle (co-editor, Duke Law Journal) who was also a GGA investigator.

(Alison had taken a two-week bartending course to learn how to handle speed racks, double sinks, ice bins, blenders, and soda guns with theatrical sincerity around customers. She learned how to mix a Beagle's Tail, a Blarney Stone, and a Slow Southern Screw—vodka, Southern Comfort, sloe gin, and orange juice—and was therefore slightly let down only to be asked for Jack on the rocks and Honker's Ale.)

The reporter gravely explained that the bartender had asked the alderman for help against the irrational demands of pitiless city bureaucrats. The alderman had assured her, “I'll take care of it.”

They played the video once more, zooming in on the white envelope as if it were the winning kick of the World Cup. They sent bold letters marching along the bottom of the screen: ‘OASIS’ FOR CORRUPTION?

BARTENDER: “This is something to thank you for all of your
time and trouble, alderman.”

ALDERMAN SLAVINSKAS: “It's no trouble. I always have time
for you, gorgeous.”

Sunny's phone warbled inside a pocket. He let it jiggle. Overhead, there was a shot of Linas, wearing a more sober gray muffler above the same coat, speaking inside a circle of light and cluster of microphones in front of his home. Clouds of breath broke above him with each word.

“These charges are ridiculous,” he declared, in a level, affable voice. “In fact, they're even untrue. I am assembling proof to refute this nonsense, and it will be my pleasure to meet you ladies and gentlemen in the second floor conference room at City Hall tomorrow morning at eight. So get your rest, and …” He began to turn away; a shouted question brought him back.

“Am I worried?” he repeated. “I'm an innocent man. They spent months on this so-called investigation. Let me have a few hours to reach some people and defend twenty-five years serving the people of my ward and city. Things will look a lot different by eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Tonight, I throw myself upon the mercy and sense of fair play of the people of Chicago …”

“He better not just rely on that,” said Terry, as more chihuahuas’ questions yelped and leapt at Linas’ heels down the long walk back toward the glossy front door of his house.

Sunny's phone buzzed again in his pocket; he answered without looking for the number.

“I've got them, lordship.”

“Linas!” Sunny turned away from the bar, and brought his mouth closer to his chest.

“There are shots that can bring me down,” Linas told him. “Not this one.”

“They're running it over and over.”

“Who watches television? Psychos, shut-ins, and pimply teenage boys who just wait to jerk off when the girl who does sports comes on. Tomorrow, the same pictures will tell a different story. Stay tuned, your lordship.”

Sunny could hear the click of another call and checked the screen. Terry, without so much as a nod of instruction, had topped off his glass; Sunny nodded in gratitude.

“Linas, is there—”

“I'm absolutely fine, lordship,” he said. “I'm going to sleep the sleep of the just.” Sunny heard a woman's giggling chime behind Linas. “After I spend about an hour licking Rosie's toes.” The volume of the giggles climbed. Linas's wife was a smart, lissome blond woman—and attorney—named Rosemarie Fennell Slavinskas.

“Then good night, my friend,” Sunny told him. “You're always the best show in town.”

Vera's voice clicked on: she spoke in an urgent hush.

“You don't suppose, Sunny,” she said, “that after all this time, Linas will be brought down by a redhead bearing gifts. He's too smart.”

“It's the smart ones who think they're too smart to get caught,” Sunny reminded her. “I was just on the phone with him, Vera. He really is amazing—sounds like he's just won the lottery.”

“My phone has been beeping, beeping, beeping,” she said. “I want to say something like, 'Alderman Slavinskas is a longtime colleague with whom I have worked despite many disagreements. I also respect the Good Government Association. All Chicagoans will be interested in what Alderman Slavinskas says tomorrow.”

“Perfect,” said Sunny. “Utterly useless. And the picture plays over and over.”

“You were with Evelyn,” she said.

“She loves you Vera. But until …”

“Could this be until?”

Sunny paused.

“John, Felix, Patrick, Keith, might feel they can't stick with him. Linas knows the numbers. If votes fall away, Linas won't play his hand. He'll fold and wait for next year. Arty may stick around. Daryl—it wouldn't matter. Arty—if we worked on him—might even be persuaded to put you over by acclamation. But you can't say until until.”

“And if Linas is indicted?” Sunny stayed silent for a moment while the word smacked them both.

“I mean, it's on stage, screen, and video, Sunny,” she said. “‘No trouble, gorgeous. I always have time for you.’”

“He'll keep his seat,” Sunny answered finally. “Linas could run and win from Death Row. But in this day and age, he won't be mayor—not even here. The state's attorney and U.S. Attorney will use this to get into his file cabinets. He'll become a professional defendant.”

Sunny heard Vera Barrow blow out a long breath through her immaculate pastel lips; he wondered if she had decided to permit herself a cigarette.

“Strange. I'm almost sad,” she said.

There was another chorus of clicks on the line, and Sunny told Vera that he would speak with her in the morning. The caller ID flashed: US-ATTY NODIST IL. It was 10:35 on a Saturday night, and Brooks Whetstone was at his office.

“This wasn't our story, alderman,” he told Sunny. “The mayor mentioned that the alderman favored redheads. And blonds, brunettes, and midgets. But that's not a state secret. A story like this, Mr. Roopini, is just pebbles and twigs to us.”

Sunny didn't know the term.

“What one Neanderthal man offered another to get a better pelt.” Then Brooks Whetstone lowered his voice; Sunny had to cup a hand over his right ear to hear. Rula and Rita waved the light-green check from their table, and Sunny tried to use both elbows to point to himself; he must have looked like he was trying to take off.

“We're more interested in how a major corporation buys influence in a major American city.”

Sunny turned around from Terry's bar again and emphasized a dramatic, weary sigh.

“No one bribed anyone to get Yello here,” he said. “Sweep out all the opera tickets, celebrity chefs, autographed jerseys, and Jerry Springer, it was a business deal.”

“Giving up tax revenues for ten years?” Brooks Whetstone asked. “Some business. Great deal.”

“Tax revenues are projections,” said Sunny. “Pie charts on a wall. Jobs are real. We traded flickering images for bread, butter, and salt. We got the headquarters of a company that will shape the world.”

“And fund your political machine,” said Brooks.

“Oh, please.” Sunny fairly spat out the words. Rita, looking cool and cross, had brought over the check, which Sunny scarcely surveyed before fishing into his pocket and shoving a sheaf of twenties into the slipcase.

“You folks say machine the way the mayor said antediluvian,” he told Brooks Whetstone. “Or the way some people say fascist, terrorist, and high cholesterol. Political machines went the way of steam engines, coughing, gasping, and conking out. You only see them in carnivals and museums now. Nobody listens to anybody. Everybody knows about everything. There is no they in politics anymore. They don't decide who becomes dogcatcher. Politicians take a poll before they go to the bathroom. Number one or number two? You tell us, Chicago! Soap my hands or just rinse them? Politicians don't get a dog until they figure out which breed polls better. Felix Kowalski counts all the Frutas y Vehículo signs across from his ward office on Archer and names his daughter Concepcion. I tell him, ‘Felix, a few more Ethiopian families have moved in on Fifty-fifth. Get busy! You need a boy named Tes-faye!’ If we have a machine here, Mr. Whetstone, I wish to hell someone would tell me where the plug is.”

Terry held out the slipcase of Sunny's check, the edges of four twenties sticking out like the folds of a pocket square. Sunny waved it away, silently mouthing, For her, for you. He overheard Rula and Rita show Diego the autographed picture of some crime movie star. “Amore. That means love,” Sunny was disconcerted to overhear Diego explain. “The Italians have a concept of love that's more cosmopolitan than our Anglo-Saxon views.” Muriel and Virginie announced to Terry that, on the basis of their survey, Cub players looked more handsome in their photographs than White Sox, Chicago Bear players appeared bulbous and gross, and that Bulls were cuter than the Blackhawks.

“Hockey players have no teeth,” he advised them. “Toothless Poles and Russians with more stitches in their chins than a pair of drapes. We had, what's his name, Vasily Stroganoff or whatever, in here last week. He ordered chicken vesuvio. We had to put the whole thing—thighs, breasts, peas, garlic, red pepper, and potatoes—through a blender for him. Looked like baby mash. I asked his wife, a hot young Czech, if I should bring over a few crayons, too.”

“I always learn something from our conversations, alderman,” Brooks Whetstone suddenly announced in Sunny's ear. “I hope we talk again.”

Rula, Rita, Muriel, and Virginie chatted about Diego in the back seat of the black car as Sgt. McNulty saw them back home to the 48th, stopping once on Goethe to let Diego slip home. No sooner had Sunny unfolded his legs than his phone rumbled in his chest pocket and he had to take a call from Chief Martinez. He affected not to react to the fact that he overheard the girls whisper scrumptious and lean in proximity to Diego's name, but had to hold his hand up in the tumult of backseat giggles to hear the chief say heavily, “Nothing from Ponce and Said, sir. Maybe nothing at all. We have people picking through everything. We have to break now, but we'll start in on them again at four.”

“Break?” asked Sunny. “Look, Matt, if this is some kind of union rule …”

“Our own, sir. Six hours of sleep for people in custody. If we get anything out of them, the last thing we want is—”

“Absolutely right, chief,” said Sunny. “Put mints on their pillows if you have to.”

“As a matter of fact, we ordered in for them,” said Chief Martinez. “Thin crust from Marino's. A competitor, I know, but they ate heartily.”

“You know some judges, Matt,” said Sunny. “They'll only say, ‘What, no cannolis?’”

Sunny was splayed on his bed when Rula came to find him. He had kicked one shoe from a foot, but the second refused to fall and gripped his toes like a window washer who had slipped on the platform. His trousers had been pulled nearly up to his knees in little corrugated rumples, and Sheldon had burrowed into a ridge of the blanket between his pinstriped thighs, blinking and dozing while Sunny played his thumb over the channel changer.

Rula sat down on the side of the bed to scratch Sheldon's gray head. His older daughter's eyes were glassy like the surface of a dark lake.

“You've had a beer,” remarked Sunny.

“Two, bloody hell. Isn't that alright?”

“Of course.”

“Diego?” she demanded.

“He seems nice.”

“Oh, great, bloody hell.” She bit off her words. “That's a rice flour comment. Why not just call him an ass?”

“I liked him,” Sunny insisted. “We didn't really have a chance.…”

“Yes. Always a phone call. Always something.”

“Darling,” he tried to say gently, “you know what's going on now.”

“Now?”

Rula had pulled back her hair, so that when she wrenched her head suddenly around the black tail snapped in Sunny's face. He looked at her heavily and tried to reply lightly.

“I know. All of our lives. But I made dosas for you most days—until you started leaving early to avoid them. Or me.”

“You noticed? Seriously? How? You were always everywhere else.”

“We're in the service business,” he said softly. “You have to serve uthappam at seven p.m., when most people have dinner. You have to have community meetings at eight, when most people are home from work. When you and your sister want to go to Northwestern or Columbia, they ask for money, not whether or not I was there every time you fell off your tricycles. I tried to be at the places I could.”

“Only if you ran out of other places to be. Is that why they call it running for office? Running away?”

“Why would you ever—”

“I know I was a mistake. Mammaji told me. It slipped out. She was angry, she had a third glass of wine, you weren't around—as usual— and she tried to take it back. But—”

“You were a surprise,” said Sunny. “That's different.”

“Rita?” She practically spat her sister's name. “You wanted someone else to ignore?”

Sunny hesitated in reply, and then realized any hesitation would envenom any words he might try.

“We loved you so much, we wanted to be surprised again,” he said. Rula shoved his words back, like burnt toast.

“You have to be around to see a surprise,” she said. “You were closing the restaurant, sitting through a stupid bloody fucking ward meeting, making sure you were seen out with the snowplows, swapping lies with the mayor….” She swished three quick circles with a hand, to suggest an infinity of insincerities. Then Rula turned away, showing Sunny her neck: the supple, tawny limb that was Elana's neck, too.

Sunny tried to touch her with just a thumb; she arched her back, as if his very touch were some kind of excruciating live wire. She finally let Sunny put two fingers of his hand lightly on her left shoulder, as if he were touching the skin of a cobra.

“Why would you have wanted me around more if you hate me so much?”

Rula stood up instantly. The bedsprings whimpered, Sheldon jerked awake, and red from the neon lights of the Riviera Theater rippled over the bedroom curtains.

“I don't hate you, Pappaji. I'm just bored by you. Like our mother was.”

A century seemed to pass between them. Pages flipped and fell into history. Steamships pulled out and airplanes landed. Sheldon tucked his head into Sunny's knee. Sunny heard his shoe finally plop onto the floor. They both heard the squeak of a spigot and the rush of water: Rita brushing her teeth—or just running water to let them know she was listening, or trying to blot out the sound of a late-night phone call. Rula sat back on the bed, a bottom's length farther from Sunny than she had been before.

“She never told you?”

“Of course. She said that I bored her, that she couldn't stand me, that she didn't like my friends, that I watched too much football. We loved each other.”

His daughter dawdled a toe under the bed, a few inches closer. Finally, Rula offered a few inches of her face to Sunny, her almond skin flushed with pink.

“Why did you bring more children into this world anyway?” she asked. “All the wars and lies.”

“That's why,” said Sunny. “A new chance.”

“That's all? That's bloody it?”

“Nothing is harder to come by. You should know that,” Sunny shot back without reserve. When he saw Rula's shoulders sink like a doll's being put back on a shelf, he knew that he had finally gained something back.

“I'm sorry.”

“You bloody well should be,” said Sunny. “There's lots and lots of other things in the world to blame me for.”

Rula held her hand behind her back and opened it in front of Sunny. Long fingers, quivering slightly, three long lifelines slashed deep across her palm, a small purple bandage swathed over her thumb. Sunny rubbed it gently.

“Kitchen cut,” she offered. “Mincing chilis.”

“The unkindest cut,” said Sunny. He laced his fingers lightly into hers and squeezed softly. He put the palm of his other hand onto Sheldon's head and rubbed it back and forth, slowly, until he could see the cat's eyes begin to blink and close. Rula sat forward, an elbow on her knee, as her voice got softer.

“Diego says it's all over the place that you're leaving the council.”

“Probably.”

“You could have told us.”

“If I knew for sure myself. Right now, it's an idea I try out.”

“Eldad says you could be secretary of state.”

“Not the one with a plane, who goes to Geneva and Paris. The Illinois one goes to a fish fry every Friday night in Rantoul or Blooming-ton. I'm not so fond of fried fish. Or Bloomington.”

“Congress?” Rula sat back and held the back of her hand to an eye, while Sunny squirmed and resettled himself against a twisted pillow, taking care to put Sheldon's head back against his knee.

“I'd like to get elected,” he said. “I'm not sure I'd like the job. All the back and forth, like a ball bouncing around in a stairwell. All the votes going nowhere. Running again every two years—like never getting out of high school. I'm thinking—your mother and I used to talk about this—of getting some partners and financing while my name means something. Opening a classy place. There's an old bus garage on Clark, right off Devon. Something might open up on Lincoln.”

“Bloody hell, we'd never see you,” she said.

“Isn't that what you want?”

“We could help, you know,” said Rula. “We've grown up ass deep in masala.”

“Yes. Yes. It could even be fun,” said Sunny. “But I don't want you to miss out on all the things you should be doing.” He held up for a moment to offer a smile and waited for Rula to flash one back.

“Temple meetings and youth groups,” she said.

“Book clubs and sewing circles, yes,” Sunny added.

“You'd miss politics, Pappaji.”

“Now and then. The St. Patrick's Day parade, for sure. I'd miss election nights.”

“Not me,” said Rula. She reached back for the elastic loop behind her head and pulled, shaking her hair across her shoulders.

Sunny recalled the last election night that he had taken his daughters along on his circuit of ward offices. They had yawned, squirmed, and traded tart observations over dreary buffets of pygmy carrots and limp bell pepper slices guarding puddles of desiccated hummus (in deference to the age and cholesterol of most precinct workers). City precincts reported first, with dramatic Democratic majorities. But then the returns from suburbs began to come in. Then, those from farther down the pie slice shape of Illinois. Totals changed. Margins tightened. Leads deflated. By ten p.m., the incumbent Democratic governor had been defeated, along with the Democratic attorney general, whose campaign had never recovered from his cosmopolitan explanation of his relationship with seventeen-year-old interns. “Anytime you have to say, ‘This would never be a scandal in France,’” the mayor told Sunny, “you know you've got a problem in Peoria.”

“There's no drama,” Rula countered now from the bed. “All the polls tell people what they think and what's going to happen.”

“Still everything is at stake,” said Sunny. “There's something majestic about that. For a few hours, everything that self-important people hope is in the hands of a lot of people who fill coffee mugs. It may hurt me just to sit and watch. But if I stay much longer …” Sunny made a churning motion around his head. “… my brain will turn to rice flour.”

Rula put down a hand against one of Sheldon's whiskers, then her head against Sunny's shoulder, and then her chin against his chest. She tried to rest against him the way she had when she was six. But the parts no longer fit. Their knees knocked against each other, her chin ground into his collarbone.

“Maybe I'm too big for this,” she said. She giggled and burped a few dainty, beery bubbles into his shoulder.

The rippling red lights from the Riviera marquee had stopped rolling over the bedroom curtains. They could hear paper cups blow over the Lawrence Avenue El platform, scurrying and popping. Rula's hair smelled flowery. Sunny put his palm softly on Elana's slender birch neck. It filled his hand.

“Baby,” he called out softly, so as not to wake her. “Baby.”