"I wasn't planning to. Why?"
"Well, won't you have to go to Washington? Isn't that, like, really far away?"
I nodded in understanding. "Ah, well, it's not that far away. It's a couple of hours by car. Maybe I'll have to get a girlfriend down there and stay at her place when I'm in Washington." I winked at Marilyn's parents as I said this.
Charlie started laughing. Marilyn fell into the trap, though, and started hooting and hollering! "There's not going to be any girlfriends! You'll be coming home!" She kept going like this for another minute, and even the Lefleurs were laughing at her. She then did the usual finger wag and said, "You think you're so smart! See if I ever vote for you again."
"You told me you were voting Democrat, that way we'd cancel each other out."
"Smartass!"
"Better than being a dumbass.", I responded.
"With you, they're the same thing!"
Holly and Molly were laughing at their mother now, too. I just sat there and smiled.
The polls were going to close at eight, and we wanted to be at the campaign reception before then. We had rented the Westminster Best Western, which was about the biggest banquet hall in the area. Anything bigger was down inside the Beltway, probably. We had a podium set up at one end of the room with a few flags behind it, and space for cameras and reporters in front of it. I figured we would get a few of each, considering the colossal nonsense we had gone through with this campaign! Oh, and the free drinks for the reporters wouldn't hurt, either. Everybody else simply got tickets for two free drinks, after which they had to buy their own.
We got there around half past seven, and found the place surprisingly filled. It was more than just the campaign volunteers, too. My partners at the Buckman Group were there, along with the Destriers and Jack Nerstein. Brewster McRiley was running around, nervous as all get-out, and driving people nuts.
I finally grabbed him and pulled him out of the room. "Brew, you're going crazy. Now settle down before we tie you into a chair." I led the way to the suite we had booked as our little headquarters. The powers that be followed along.
"But there's so much to do.", he protested.
"No, Brewster, there isn't. It's all over by now, except for the counting. There's nothing left to do except give a speech and have a party." I pushed him towards an armchair and pushed him down into it. "Now, stay there. Do you have a girlfriend? Do I need to have her sit on you to keep you in place?"
He smiled at me. "No, no girlfriend."
"A boyfriend then?"
His eyes popped open. "Jesus, NO!" I just smiled at him until he realized I was goofing on him. "Marilyn's right, you really are a son of a bitch!"
"There you go. Now calm down and relax. Have fun and say thank you to all the volunteers. Either we win and I give a victory speech and we have a party, or I lose and I give a concession speech, and we all get drunk and cry. It's what us mathematicians call a binary outcome, a zero sum game. I will let you stand up if you promise to go find a beer and have a drink."
Brew rolled his eyes but promised, and I laughed as I sent him out. John and Jack Nerstein came in with some Solo cups and a bucket of ice, and a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of Sprite. We poured ourselves a round of drinks. "Mud in your eyes, gentlemen!", Jack said.
"Down the hatch!", I agreed.
"Skoal!", said John. He drank some, and then asked, "You ready for this?"
"It's too late to back out now." I had another swallow. "I don't know which scares me more, losing and having to face people afterwards, or winning and actually having to be a Congressman! What in the fuck do I actually know about being a Congressman!?"
"Well, you can't be any worse than Stewart, and maybe we get some good out of you.", answered Nerstein with a smile.
"Boy, there's a rousing campaign slogan - 'He can't do any worse than the current asshole!' Remind me not to have you involved in my next campaign." Both men laughed at that.
We had a couple of televisions around the place, one out in the big room and another in the suite's bedroom. One was tuned to WMAR and the other to WJZ. At eight, Marilyn and Helen Steiner came in, along with Brew and Missy, and we started watching. All they said at eight was that the polls were closing. They didn't offer any predictions based on exit polls yet. We all had a round of drinks. Helen asked, "What are you going to do with the campaign headquarters?"
I shrugged. "If I lose, we clean out and I slink off home and cry. If I win, though, I was thinking of just buying it. We can make part of it my local district office, and leave the other part for storage and future campaigns. Ask me again tomorrow."
"I'll ask you again, tonight!"
We were running a war room in a corner of the main room, with a couple of phones set up. At about a quarter after eight, we started getting calls from various precincts around the district, and they started writing totals on a blackboard. We had a lead at the start, but when the total is less than one percent of the vote, it's meaningless. By nine, however, the lead was pretty significant. There were approximately 210,000 votes that would likely be cast in the election, and the running total was 19,571 for me and 17,223 for Stewart. The television stations still weren't calling it, though.
I was too keyed up to think. I made myself another drink, and Marilyn followed me, and I made her one as well. "You need to calm down." She pushed me down on the couch and then sat down next to me. People came in and out, and every once in a while somebody would let out a whoop as another precinct was phoned in.
The lid blew off the place at ten. There was some screaming out in the main room and Jack Nerstein yelled, "You won! You won!"
I started to get up off the couch, when a worker bee ran in. "WBAL just called it. You won!"
I turned to stare at Marilyn, who was just staring back. Brew McRiley went to the television in the living room and switched it to WBAL, but stopped as the WMAR news came on at the top of the hour. We stopped there and watched. "We now have a stunning upset to call. In the Maryland Ninth, with 38% of the vote in, we are predicting that Republican billionaire investor Carl Buckman will unseat the eight term Democratic incumbent, Andy Stewart. In what is widely considered one of the nastiest campaigns across the country this election season, Buckman is beating Stewart by over twenty points."
There was a graphic on the screen, with both our names listed, and the vote count. Buckman was listed as 48,995, 61%, and Stewart was listed as 31,047, 39%. The total vote count was specified as 38%. There was a big check mark next to my name, and my picture was on the screen. Then there was a blip, and the results went to 52,325 and 32,029, and the percentages went to 62% and 38%.
Around me everybody was damn near screaming, but I just stared as the announcer went on to call the Maryland Fourth. I turned to my wife and just stared at her. "Holy shit!", I muttered.
Marilyn's face was as lit up as everyone else's. She squealed and threw herself at me, and I grabbed her by sheer reflex. I felt numb. Brewster grabbed my hand and started shaking, and I just looked at him and stared. "Carl! Carl?"
"Holy shit!", I said to him.