Torn between resentment at his patronizing tone and genuine curiosity, Erin yielded to the latter. “What’s a quick and dirty?”

  “Something that accuses the other candidate of a charge that is either false or impossible to refute. Even if he can prove it’s a lie, the damage is done; people remember the accusation longer than the refutation.”

  “Oh.”

  “You didn’t tell me you knew Rosemary way back when.”

  “It was my mother who knew her.”

  “Before you were born?”

  “Well—before and after. We lived in Richmond until I was two.”

  “And then you moved to—”

  “Indianapolis.”

  “I thought the accent was midwestern,” Nick said. “So you haven’t seen Rosemary since?”

  “No.” It was beginning to sound, and feel, like an interrogation.

  “Nobody ever tells me anything, but I get the impression this isn’t a purely social call. Kay was right, you know; our cash flow is a muddy trickle. If you’re looking for a job—”

  “I don’t know that that’s any of your business, Mr. McDermott.”

  “Nick. It could be my business. I wear a lot of different hats; you might end up working for me if you—”

  “Excuse me.” Erin rose. “I’m going to have a little more salad.”

  After helping herself, she went to join the others. The job wasn’t so important to her that she was willing to be quizzed by a lowly volunteer, how ever many hats he wore. He had no right to pry into her background. Hadn’t Joe said it was Rosemary who would make the decision?

  She looked at Rosemary—feet on the coffee table, hair straggling—and hoped her feelings about this peculiar interview didn’t show on her face. It was so wildly different from the way she had pictured it—a stately mansion, a handsomely furnished office, Rosemary rising with quiet dignity from behind a mahogany desk, wearing something elegant and tailored.… Surely this was not a typical political campaign, or a typical candidate. Why did Rosemary allow these people, her subordinates, to treat her the way they did? Well, not Nick or Jeff, they were polite enough, but even they didn’t demonstrate the deference a congresswoman ought to command, and the other pair were downright rude at times.

  Kay was the next one to engage Erin in a private conversation—not difficult, since the argument between Joe and Rosemary had risen in volume and the others were listening, putting a word in now and then when they could make themselves heard. Kay’s questions were even more searching than Nick’s had been, but this time Erin felt she could not refuse to answer. She wasn’t sure of Kay’s precise position, but the older woman obviously held a high-level job. Perhaps Rosemary had deputized her to conduct the job interview.

  Erin had barely begun to describe her background when Kay surprised her by saying, “I knew your father, years ago, when he handled some of Congressman Marshall’s legal work. We were sorry to hear of his death. Cancer, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize you—”

  “You yourself have had no legal training?”

  “No, I majored in English.”

  “No experience in the law? Not even in your father’s office—part-time, perhaps?”

  “I did work for him one summer.” Erin realized that legal experience would have been a plus, but honesty compelled her to continue. “It was just routine. Typing and filing.”

  “I see.” Kay’s eyes dropped to her work. She executed a series of complex stitches and then looked at Erin. “What made you decide to leave Indianapolis? I would have thought your mother would want you near her, especially now.”

  The not-so-implicit criticism put Erin on the defensive. “She’s living with my aunt. There was … there wasn’t as much money as we had thought. We had to sell the house, and Aunt Ann was living alone, she never married, and she was glad to have Mother, they’ve always been close. I didn’t feel … They didn’t really need me.…”

  Kay’s gaze was cool and unwavering. A wave of resentment filled Erin, not so much against Kay as against herself. It did not occur to her—then—that the questions had no real bearing on her qualifications for a job. She only knew she was telling Kay far more than she needed to know, and when she went on her voice was brusque to the point of rudeness. “I need the money—for myself and for Mother. I thought I could earn more here.”

  “I see.” Kay’s voice matched hers. “But why Washington? Why not Chicago, New York?”

  It was another question that had no short, simple answer. Erin explained about Fran and the apartment and the job opportunities; Kay listened with an expression that suggested none of it made any sense or answered the question. “I suppose,” Erin said finally, “it was partly because the area wasn’t entirely strange to me. It was years ago that I lived in Virginia, but I liked it, and—and …”

  She stammered into silence as she realized the other voices had stopped and that they were all looking at her. Rosemary frowned.

  “All right, Kay,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to Erin myself.”

  The others took the hint. Jeff was the first to leave, after a coolly courteous “Nice to have met you, Miss Hartsock.” Joe’s comment was more friendly: “See you around, kid.” Nick followed him out, with no more than a nod at Erin. She wondered if she had offended him, and decided she didn’t care if she had. Kay remained firmly planted in her seat until Rosemary asked pointedly about some letters that had to go out that day; then she moved slowly, stopping to look back at Rosemary as if she were hoping to be asked to remain.

  When the door closed after Kay, Erin expected Rosemary to begin questioning her. Instead she turned and called loudly, “We give you leave to depart, Will.”

  Erin had forgotten he was there. He rose slowly, fixing Rosemary with a critical stare. “Now it’s the royal ‘we.’ I do urge you to consider what you are about to do, Miss Hartsock. It’s dangerous enough to get involved with this gang of rampant individualists, but a boss suffering from delusions of grandeur—”

  “Go away, Will,” Rosemary said.

  Will winked solemnly at Erin and ambled out.

  Ten minutes later Erin left the house. There was no one in sight, except for the scattered cats. Two kittens—a tabby and a gray-and-white—were chasing a leaf, but the rest were asleep, forming furry puddles on the chairs or sprawled in drowsy stupor across the worn floor.

  The car was as hot as an oven. Erin took off her jacket and then—after a wary glance to make sure no one was looking—struggled out of her panty hose.

  Thus refreshed, she was able to think more clearly. It had happened so fast she felt a little dazed. A series of rapid-fire questions from Rosemary—none of them personal, all of them relating to her experience, expectations, and salary requirements—had relieved her of any need to explain or elaborate. Nor had Rosemary deliberated over her decision.

  “I can’t offer you any more than you are presently earning, and I certainly can’t promise you job security. I’m not even sure at this point precisely what I will ask you to do. It depends to a certain extent on you—your interest, your willingness to turn your hand to whatever may be asked of you. To an even larger extent, however, your job depends on factors over which none of us has any control. The only thing I can promise you is that you won’t be bored. If you are willing to take a chance—”

  Erin had committed the social solecism of interrupting in her eagerness to accept.

  As she sat mopping her perspiring face she wondered why she had been so eager. Rosemary was unquestionably an attraction; she had been charming and friendly, even insisting Erin call her by her first name. It was exciting to be on first-name terms with someone you had seen on television, But was that ephemeral reward worth the risk of finding herself unemployed after only a few weeks or months? What would happen to Rosemary’s staff if she lost the election? Rosemary would be out of a job too. She had given up her House seat in order to run for the Senate.

  I must have lost my mind, Erin thought. At least I could have told her I wanted to consider it for a day or two.… And then a sudden, uncharacteristic burst of recklessness overwhelmed her. Why the hell should I consider it? Fran is always telling me I’m too chicken, too conservative. Why not take a chance for once? I’m young and healthy and capable. I can find another job if I have to; there’s always McDonald’s! And if Rosemary does lose, I won’t be the only one looking for work. They’ll all be unemployed, including her.

  She put the car in gear and turned the air-conditioning on full blast. It made enough noise to drown out the sounds that were coming from the house, but she glanced into the rearview mirror in time to see Kay come running out onto the porch, with a speed that contrasted sharply with her usual deliberate movements. Erin stopped the car. But apparently Kay didn’t want her; the older woman came to a halt at the top of the stairs and stood gazing, but she didn’t motion or call.

  After a moment Erin drove on. She had forgotten the incident by the time she reached the highway.

  2

  Erin stared at the letter in disgust. It had been written on coarse brown paper torn off a grocery bag and the ballpoint pen had scored deeply into the rough surface.

  “Problem?”

  She looked up to see Nick standing by her desk. He was usually around; she had been working for a week, and so far he hadn’t missed a day. She was not vain enough to suppose that she was the attraction. The office, just outside the District in Arlington, was Rosemary’s headquarters, the space having been donated—like so many other things—by an admiring constituent who hadn’t been able to rent the store anyway. It had the look of all temporary offices: paint hastily applied, wires and extension cords running every which way, cheap hired desks and office chairs. From the walls Rosemary Marshall’s face looked down in endless repetition, surrounded by draped red-white-and-blue bunting. The acoustics were terrible: phones shrilling, word processors humming, typewriters clicking, blended into a dull roar of sound.

  For once she didn’t mind Nick’s assumption of authority. Wordlessly she handed him the paper. He scanned it in a glance, his lips curling.

  “Cute. Can’t spell very well, can he?”

  “He knows the two essential four-letter words.”

  “Probably from seeing them scrawled on walls.” Nick dropped the letter and dusted his fingers fastidiously. “File it under S, as usual.”

  “S for ‘sicko’?” Erin placed the letter in the designated basket. Incoming letters were sorted by type: contributions, requests for help or for information, complaints, and so on. Since Rosemary was both candidate and, until the end of her term, congresswoman as well, it was not always easy to determine into which category a particular letter might belong, but Rosemary was insistent on keeping them separate. Letters that dealt with constituents’ problems were forwarded to her office on the Hill, and that office in turn sent campaign mail to Arlington. Erin had been given the sorting job only that morning. It was a step up from typing lists, for it required some discrimination—and, as she had already learned, one could not be too squeamish.

  “Or ‘shit,’” Nick said. There were half a dozen other sheets of paper in the S file; he picked one up and began to read it. His face was as mobile as an actor’s; eyebrows, lips, and cheek muscles twitched in sympathy with his emotions.

  “Why does she keep them?” Erin asked.

  “What would you do with them?”

  “Throw them away. Burn them—”

  “Oh, everybody gets letters like these,” Nick said absently. Then he realized what he had said, and laughed. “All public figures, I mean. They develop a certain thickening of the skin. But crap like this can’t be ignored. There are a lot of loonies in the world, and thanks to the NRA, too many of ’em own guns.”

  “But surely no one would—” She broke off, not needing Nick’s quizzical sidelong glance to tell her she was being naive. People would; people had.

  She shivered and Nick looked at her. “Maybe you’d rather do something else.”

  “Of course not! I can handle it. You’re the one who’s making a big thing of it!”

  Nick pretended to cower. “Please don’t hit me, lady, I was just trying to be a little gent. I keep forgetting you feminists don’t like it.”

  “I am not a feminist. I hate that word.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with being a feminist? High bloody time you were, isn’t it?”

  “I do not want to discuss the subject,” Erin said frostily,

  “Right, right. Nothing to discuss. Self-evident. Anything you say. No, but seriously—I wasn’t trying to put you down; I encountered a couple of equally foul offerings when I was sorting mail, and I’m not too proud to admit they made me sick at my stomach.”

  The confession made Erin feel a good deal more kindly toward him. “You sorted mail?”

  “Lady, I’ve tackled most everything,” Nick said in a John Wayne drawl. “I wasn’t always the big shot you see today. Only one year ago I was as insignificant and humble as you; a mere cipher in the majestic numbers of politics, a cog in the bureaucratic wheel.…”

  “Then you must have something more important to do,” Erin said, unable to refrain from smiling.

  “My day wouldn’t be complete without a quick glance through the shit file,” Nick said. “This guy doesn’t know his Bible very well. The number of the beast is 666—no way you can get Rosemary’s name to fit that—and said beast is specifically designated as male.”

  The letter he held was almost a manuscript—eight single-space typewritten pages. “It was incoherent throughout,” Erin said. “Why are the religious-fundamentalist people down on her?”

  “She’s against prayer in the schools and public funding for private schools. Both hot issues in rural Virginia.” Nick tossed the letter aside. “That one wasn’t so bad. ‘Whore of Babylon’ seems to be the strongest epithet. What’s this?”

  It was the last letter in the basket—typed, like the one he had discarded, but containing only two lines. Erin glanced at it.

  “I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. At first I thought it might be from some undetected criminal, asking for reassurance; but it’s not a question, is it?”

  The message was short and simple. “There is no statute of limitations for murder.”

  Nick departed somewhat abruptly, taking the S file with him. He mumbled something that sounded like “right to life,” and Erin puzzled over it briefly, wondering if some new in phrase had replaced “see you around” and “so long.” Then the light dawned. Of course, that must be the meaning of the ambiguous letter—another way of calling Rosemary Marshall a baby killer, a favorite epithet of right-to-lifers.

  She had worked her way through most of the letters when one of the volunteers brought the morning delivery, and an involuntary moan escaped her when she saw the bulk of it. The other girl’s smile was not untouched with malice; Erin was one of the few in the office who was getting paid, and she knew she was an object of envy.

  Steeling herself, she returned to the attack. There were no more anonymous outpourings in the first dozen envelopes, only a letter written more in sorrow than in anger that wanted to know why Rosemary didn’t find herself some nice fella and settle down, instead of chasing around the state doing stuff “wemin” wasn’t meant to do. After brief consideration, Erin decided not to consign it to the S file. “Mrs. Dick Milhauser” had signed her name, and she didn’t sound threatening. Was there, Erin wondered, a form letter for such impertinent and irrelevant inquiries?

  As she studied it, the door of an inner office opened and Joe ambled out. From the corner of his mouth a cigar emerged at a jaunty, FDR angle. He stopped by Erin’s desk, removed the cigar, looked around as if searching for an ashtray, found none—there were “No Smoking” signs all over the office—and put it back in his mouth.

  “Let’s go out for coffee.”

  “There’s a coffeemaker back there.” Erin started to rise. “Would you like me to—”

  “I said ‘out.’” Joe took her arm and led her to the door, giving her barely time to snatch her purse from where it hung over the back of her chair.

  That should do it, Erin thought. The people who had been sucking up to her would increase the suction; the ones who resented her would have even greater cause. If Rosemary Marshall was the White Goddess of the volunteers, Joe was her High Priest, and although he was matey enough with the others, cracking jokes and slapping backs and bottoms, such a sign of favor to an individual was rare.

  The coffee shop down the street was crowded, since it was getting on toward lunchtime. The place was popular with Rosemary’s supporters, being convenient to headquarters; they were easy to identify, since they all sported huge “Marshall for Senator” buttons. Joe stopped by a table occupied by a pair of them. “You guys through?” he asked.

  By a strange coincidence, they were just going. Joe pulled out a chair. Catching Erin’s critical eye, he gave her a broad grin. “When you’ve got it, flaunt it.”

  “What’s it?” Erin asked.

  Joe looked down at his stomach and brushed cigar ashes off the bulge of his shirt. His tie was beyond such first aid; the stains appeared to be coffee. “It ain’t my good looks,” he admitted.

  Erin laughed. Elbows planted on the table, forehead gleaming with perspiration, he nevertheless had a certain charm. He must have been a good-looking man once, she thought, with the unconscious condescension of youth. Before he let himself go.

  Joe planted his cigar in an ashtray. “Do you mind my smoking?” he asked, in a voice whose suddenly cultured accents fell oddly on her ear.

  “No, that’s okay. My father smoked cigars. I like the smell.”

  “Rosemary told me about him. Was he ill long?”

  “It was lung cancer,” Erin said.

  She looked at his cigar, and Joe acknowledged the unspoken lecture with a grimace. “Yeah. We always assume it will happen to the other guy. I’m sorry. Must have been tough—for you and your mother both.”