Interface

"We need to talk about a couple of things," she said.

"I'm all ears," Ogle said, pulling on his ears ridiculously. They were prominent ears at the best of times. A hard pitch from Peter Domenici was sailing directly toward his right temple and at the last minute he let go of his ear and clawed the ball out of the air. A moan of disappointment went up from the fielders.

"This whole thing is so vast that I don't know where to begin," she said. "I have so many questions."

"There's no way you can understand everything," Ogle said, tossing the ball to her. "That's my job. Why don't you just tell me your main concerns."

Mary Catherine knocked a difficult grounder out to one of her Tuscola cousins. "Whose idea was it to have Dad jog from the helicopter to the podium?"

Ogle squinted into the sun, thinking that one over. "I'd be hard put to remember who came up with that one first. But your dad enjoyed doing it. And I didn't try to discourage him."

"Do you think it's advisable, given his medical problems?"

"Well, he's been jogging three miles a day."

"Yeah, but wearing a suit, under all that stress, and in front of all those cameras - what if he had some kind of a problem? Even healthy people like Bush and Carter have had problems while jogging."

"Exactly," Ogle said "that's exactly why it works."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know and I know, and your dad knows, that it's perfectly okay for him to run that short distance. My god, the man is like a human steam locomotive. But most people don't know that. All they know is that Cozzano is supposed to have been sick. They have developed this image of him as a frail, faltering invalid. When they see him jog across that football field, they see vivid evidence that this is a wrong impression, and they watch very carefully, because there's an element of danger."

"Could you run that last part by me again?" Mary Catherine said. She and Ogle had gotten into a smooth rhythm now, knocking hit after hit out to the little kids with their baseball gloves.

"The skydivers," he said. "We had three skydivers come in low over the podium and land on the grass. Now, why on earth did we do that?" Ogle sounded mystified.

"I don't know. Why did you?"

"Because everyone knows that sometimes skydivers break legs. They can't help watching. Same deal with those idiots who were setting off firecrackers."

"They worked for you?"

"Sure they did. Oh, those were just tiny little ladyfingers. You could set one off in the palm of your hand and you'd be fine. But it sure looked dangerous. So people watched. And that's why it was a great visual when your dad ran across the field."

Mary Catherine sighed. "I don't know how I feel about that."

Ogle shrugged. "Everyone's entitled to feelings."

"Speaking of that whole safety issue," she said, "when did the Secret Service start following Dad around? I didn't know he had a Secret Service detail."

"He doesn't," Ogle said. "Those were just actors."

She dropped the tip of the bat down on to home plate and stared at him. "What did you say?"

"They were actors dressed up like Secret Service."

"Hired by you."

"Of course."

She shook her head uncomprehendingly. "Why?"

"For the same reason we built extra bleachers, and put extra microphones on the lectern."

"And what reason is that?"

"Being a third-party candidate has big, big advantages," Ogle said. "But it has some disadvantages too. One of the disadvantages, as Perot found out, is that people may not take you seriously. That is the single most dangerous thing we have to worry about. So at every step along the way, we need to surround your father with the visible trappings of presidentiality. Chief among those is the Secret Service detail."

Mary Catherine just shook her head. "I can't believe you," she said.

"Sometimes I can hardly believe myself," he said, turning to face her. A soft, arcing throw was headed toward Ogle from a five-year-old stationed on the pitcher's mound. Ogle deliberately took it in the back of the head and went into a staggering pantomime of a silly man with a mild concussion, wobbling around home plate, rolling his eyes, bouncing drunkenly off the backstop. The kids went completely out of their gourds and a couple of them actually fell down on the grass, tossing their gloves up in the air, screaming with uncontrollable laughter. Mary Catherine shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. She looked at the kids who were still strong enough to remain on their feet and twirled her finger around her ear.

"When you've recovered," she said, "I have one or two more things."

"I think I feel a little better now," Ogle said. "Shoot."

"I feel like I'm being set up as some kind of a surrogate wife. It's creepy."

"Yes, it is," Ogle said.

"It borders on the perverse. I'm not going to do it anymore."

"You don't have to," Ogle said. "The only reason it happened today was that this is a formal event, kind of like a wedding. In a wedding, you know, the father is supposed to give away the bride. But if the father of the bride is dead, or if he hit the road twenty years ago with some white trash floozy and a fifth of Jack and never was heard from again, then that place must be filled by some other individual - it doesn't matter who - anyone with a Y chromosome. Could be a brother, an uncle, even the bride's high-school basketball coach. It just don't matter. Well, a campaign a

"Thanks," she snapped, rolling her eyes.

"Now that the ceremony is over, you can go back to being who you are. No more creepy stuff at least until he gets inaugurated."

"One more thing."

"What's that?"

"I'm the campaign physician."

Ogle was a bit startled. "We already hired-"

"I'm the campaign physician."

"We need you for other-"

"I'm the campaign physician," she said.

This time it sunk in. Ogle shrugged and nodded. "You're obviously the best person for the job."

The direct hit to Ogle's head had put the little kid on the pitcher's mound over the five-hundred-point mark. Mary Catherine thought about starting another game, but her attention had been drawn by a great deal of cheering and hilarity from one of the other playing fields. She headed in that direction.

A football game was in progress. Two teams of at least fifteen players each had taken the field. The ex-Bears were evenly divided between those two teams. Cozzano was, of course, the quarterback of one team. The opposing quarterback wore two Super Bowl rings. The ages of the teams ranged from ten years old up to the early seventies. Some of the players were farmers and some ran major corporations. Mary Catherine recognized Kevin Tice, the founder of Pacific Netware, serving as a wide receiver; in person, he was bigger and more athletic than his nerdy image would lead one to believe. Zeldo was in the trenches on the defensive line, being blocked by none other than Hugh MacIntyre, CEO of MacIntyre Engineering, who must have been in his early sixties but looked as strong and healthy as Dad.

The game was an extremely loose and goofy affair, with players of both teams constantly circulating on and off the field to get refreshments or visit the portable toilets. It was too hot to play hard. Still, each team had a hard core of adult men with highly com­petitive natures, and as the game wore on, all the little kids and the dilettantes dropped out and left behind half a dozen or so guys on each side, playing football that verged on serious. They didn't have a formal timekeeper, but they did have a deadline: a formal reception was taking place later at the Cozzano residence and they all had to quit playing at six o'clock.