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Even usually conservative commentators were calling Nebraska for Garland hours before the voting centers closed, so supporters had been showing up early for the victory rally in Omaha.
Volunteers were stitching the nets above the stage for the balloon drop, and merchandise sellers were unpacking the limited edition Straight Up coffee mugs and buttons and pins and Ped for President bumper stickers.
By the time the result was made official on the giant screens, the warm-up acts had whipped the crowd into a state approaching delirium.
Ped, across the road in his suite at the Marriott, had begun the day on a high, and on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The think-piece inside was the first by a major publication to take his candidacy seriously and speculate about the sort of President he would make.
Ped had also been buoyed by the Nebraska exit polls. But news out of West Virginia, the other state holding a primary, kept the cork on the champagne, and was the reason he was holding off addressing the crowd over the road.
Polls pointed to a close contest in the Mountain state, with the lead toing and froing. Analysts out east were pointing to the Gazette-Mail story about his public donation site for his failure to dominate a South Atlantic state that two weeks earlier seemed his for the plucking. Fortunately, the story ridiculing his claim to be a straight-up man of the people, hadn’t been picked up outside West Virginia. Yet.
Ped waited as long as he could, but the final count was still on a knife-edge as he headed across the road.
He entered the Grand Ballroom to the revitalizing cries of Ped Ped Ped Ped and quickly hit his stride.
‘Back when I was a kid grinding through piano lessons with Mrs. Lintott in Atlanta, trying to crack the code of that Cannon in D chord progression, I had this wild dream that one day I was gonna make it to the cover of the Rolling Stone. Just like Dylan, Kristofferson, Linda Ronstadt.
‘The thrill that’ll getcha... when you get your picture... on the cover of the Rollin’ Stone. Well, here we are. This,’ he said, holding up the current edition, ‘isn’t exactly how I imagined it happening.’
He had to wait for the cheering, whistling, foot-stamping to taper off.
‘I’ve gotta hand it to ‘em, folks. This magazine, this journalist right here, they’re the first ones who’ve really gotten us. Only took ‘em eight months!
‘Let me read y’all a coupla lines here... Ped Garland is resonating with everyday Americans feeling out of place and on edge in their own country... These people – and there are many of them – are searching for someone to blame, and high on the list are establishment politicians, the government and political correctness... In Ped Garland they’ve found a candidate who refuses to play by the established rules, who says what he thinks, to hell with the consequences. The ultimate consequence could see him trading up from a bunk in a prison cell to a seat in the oval office.’
The crowd broke into a chorus of Trade Up, Trade Up, Trade Up as his press secretary slipped him a note.
Ped raised his hands for quiet.
‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news folks. I’ve just received the final word from West Virginia. It didn’t quite go our way.’
Boos echoed around the ballroom until they were drowned out by a chant of Stolen, Stolen.
‘We didn’t exactly come out on the losing end. It was a tie. Seventeen delegates to Congresswoman Hunter, and a matching seventeen for yours truly.’
The crowd wasn’t sure how to take that news. Some booed, others resumed the Stolen chant.
Ped silenced them again.
‘Let’s be straight up here folks. A tie in West Virginia wasn’t exactly the outcome we were gunning for. Sure, it means we’ve now locked in 1162 delegates and we’re only 75 away from the goal. But it also means a bunch of folks bought into the fake news about nobody chipping in for this campaign. Your campaign.’
As he let that sink in, Ped thought back to the night at Madison Square Garden, had an idea.
‘I see we’ve got some members of the fourth estate with us here this evening.’
That set the crowd booing again. A redneck in the front row was waving a faded sign saying Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required.
‘How ‘bout this, folks? Raise your right hand if you’ve pitched in and donated to the campaign.’
Every right hand in the room – other than those in the roped-off media section – shot towards the ceiling.
‘And if you see yourself as a good ol’ everyday American, go ahead and raise your other hand.’
Ped leaned into the microphone and managed to blurt out I rest my case, before he was overwhelmed by an avalanche of Straight Up, Straight Up, Straight Up.
*****
Bec tried to shut out the Irish family playing charades too loudly at the next table, with porcelain faces like they’d just stepped off the plane from a Dublin winter. ‘Book. Two words. First word sounds like...’
Team Aristotle was sitting on cushions around a low table upstairs at a funky eatery on Hanoman Street in Ubud, trying to make sense of the limo movements they’d recorded.
Breathe it all in, love it all out whispered a sign on the chalkboard above the dessert specials – organic mulberry pie, carrot, and beet cake. If only it were that easy. Bec had entered data from their days of observations into a spreadsheet and was applying different formulae in search of patterns or anomalies.
Every table in the café was occupied by people dressed for permanent summer, many staring at phones or wearing headphones, blind to the tops of pengor poles swaying in the breeze outside the window and the platter of accents – French, American, Japanese, Dutch. Full-volume Irish.
Mike and Jay had spent so much time arguing over a prediction on a box of steel straws – that by 2050 there would be more pieces of plastic than fish in the ocean – they were only half-way through their meals.
Jay was tackling a large Indian plate of dhal, eggplant bharata, aloo gobi, raita and sautéed spinach over red rice. Mike had embraced the spirit of local cuisine by ordering a Californian burrito.
Bec had forgiven Jay for the prison episode, as had Aristotle, who was flittering over the table in the indigo flash of a butterfly’s wings, the aquamarine earrings of the waitress clearing away her plate, the denim coaster beneath her Tamarind Sensation.
Her mind needed a reboot. She closed her eyes, narrowing her focus to block out everything but the smells around her. The warm, spicy notes of ginger. The rich, creamy scent of coconut. The sharpness of basil, whispered crispness of mint, citrus undertones of frangipani.
Bec had used this heightened sensitivity technique before – while poring over boxes of invoices during an investigation into fraud at a non-profit in New Haven. It helped her identify patterns she’d overlooked.
When she opened her eyes, her attention was drawn to a different section of numbers on the screen. She entered a new formula, applied it.
Three of Eksek’s four limos were used for all but two of the 73 rides they’d observed, delivering and picking up guests of all ages from Australia, Russia, the States, Britain, China, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Israel.
The fourth limo – with a registration plate ending in GI – was used only twice, both times to deliver elderly New Zealand couples from the airport.
