New Hampshire Is for Lovers

Will a disgruntled campaign volunteer have her revenge?

By Dave Eggers

May 6, 2004 | Emboldened and crestfallen by the power available to her, Teresa sat in her chair, in the Kapucinski regional HQ, and pondered her next move.

And again she thought of Gerald Matsui. He had freckles, didn't he? That was unusual for an Asian man. But why? Why not freckles in that part of the world? And why so little facial hair? She needed to get online and find some answers...

"Teresa?"

The voice was much louder and surprising than it appears above in print. Teresa, deep in thought, almost leapt. In fact, she did leap a bit, though not enough that we'll say much more about it. It wasn't that big a deal.

The voice belonged to Gerald. He was crouching by her desk, putting him at eye level with her, or slightly below. He was not a good croucher; he seemed to be struggling to maintain his balance.

"Yes?" she said.

"Have you decided to help us? To help, dare I say, your country?"

Gerald was trying to mist his eyes a bit, to seem ready to hear momentous news, but instead he appeared to be struggling with allergies, squinting and blinking.

"I will," Teresa said, nodding for emphasis, for she had made up her mind a few minutes earlier. Not to do his bidding, necessarily, but to leave this office under no pretense, as soon as she possibly could.

"You-- You will?"

Gerald fell from his crouch onto his ass.

"Oh God," he said. "Oh God I knew it. You are that person. You are that person!"

Gerald threw his face into his hands, and held them, and his face in them, for some time, while sitting on the floor next to her desk. His shoulders shook slightly. Teresa, having no other option, patted him gently on the crown of his head.

"There, there," she said. "There, there."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Twenty minutes later, Teresa was in the cold again, walking toward the Rob Jones campaign headquarters, still unsure whether she would actually steal the box of prepaid-postage envelopes, or simply go back to working for Jones, whose tactics -- the simple removal of enemy signs and trampling upon them -- seemed somehow less soul-wrecking than the mail fraud she'd been asked to aid and abet.

With her feet numb, she stepped into Archie's, a small narrow diner between an All-State brokerage and a karate studio. Just as she was pushing the door open and thinking how much it seemed like the setting for a candidate's diner-hopping, she caught sight of a man in a beautiful black suit standing on a chair, surrounded by two video cameras. Once inside she recognized him as Alexander Hamilton Washington, the distant-polling also-ran Republican candidate.

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