a hot plate, toaster oven, microwave, and electric grill. From seven feet away, Andre can feel the appliances’ heat, worries that Brendan might set the house afire. In a skillet, eggs sizzle in butter. In the toaster oven, a yellow casserole browns. The sweet smoke makes Andre dizzy with hunger, and he can’t remember the last time he enjoyed a home-cooked meal.
“I’m making a breakfast bake.” Brendan points toward a card table set for two. “Don’t worry. I didn’t speak to anyone when I went out. I blended in.”
“Good. I may need to blend in too.” Andre sets his napkin in his lap. “I’m thinking three-piece suits aren’t popular in Carthage. I’ll find something casual when we head into town today.”
“I bought everything I needed this morning. And I got a call from the moving guys, they’ll be here soon.” Brendan slides the fried egg atop the casserole, brings breakfast to the table. “You want the Jeep? Carthage’s pretty easy to navigate.”
Andre eats his first forkful of breakfast bake: ham, tomatoes, eggs, shredded potatoes, and so much butter that he imagines, somewhere in this fire hazard, Brendan’s hidden an Amish maid and churn.
“I fixed plenty. Help yourself.” Brendan bows his head, makes the sign of the cross, and starts to say grace softly beneath his breath. Andre sets down his fork, waits for the prayer to end. Brendan says, “Amen.”
Brendan starts to eat, flexing his left biceps, on which appears a tattoo: a green shield enclosing a soccer ball and the word Ireland. The tattoo, Andre thinks, is solid work: strong lines, perfect symmetry, well shaded. In juvie, bored kids found expression through tattoos. A contraband lighter, a toothbrush, and a busted Bic could memorialize the name of the sixteen-year-old girl who swore she’d wait for the rest of her life—the same girl who, three months later, wrote you a letter saying she’d been reborn courtesy of a new man. Sometimes the juvie art was beautiful, but often the tats were blotchy, crooked, accompanied by bleeding, infection, or second-degree burns.
* * *
A pickup whips past, and Andre tightens his grip around the steering wheel. He has a license, though three years have passed since he last drove. For most of his life, he’s had no need to drive. In fact, he lied on his application to join the firm, claimed to possess a valid driver’s license issued by the District of Columbia. On that same job application, he also claimed to speak Arabic and to adore crossword puzzles, tidbits that he thought would enhance his résumé. For a while, he got away with these lies, dropping the occasional as-salaam alaikum, until ten years ago, during that presidential primary so nasty that both parties forever changed their rules. In New Hampshire in December, the road fat with snow, Mrs. Fitz asked him to drive her around to the day’s meetings. Behind the wheel, bewildered by the controls, he felt shame that he lacked a skill mastered by most sixteen-year-olds.
“Have you ever driven in snow?” asked Mrs. Fitz.
“Well, technically, no.” He hoped to engage the windshield wipers yet succeeded only in flashing the high beams. “Actually, fuck it, truthfully, ma’am, I don’t know how to drive. At all.”
“How old are you?”
“When would I have learned? Juvie?”
“People learn all types of useful things in prison.” She popped a mint into her mouth. “You really don’t know how to drive? During all your youth—the street scams, the drug walking—during all those delinquencies, you’re telling me that you never stole a car?”
“I broke into plenty. Stole tires and rims. But no, I never stole a whole car,” he said. “You sound disappointed.”
“How was I to know that you lacked ambition?”
That evening, Mrs. Fitz pounded on his hotel room door, there, he assumed, to send him home. Instead, she slapped the car keys into his palm, saying, “You might as well learn to be useful.” For the next two months, after each end-of-day briefing, in a vacant lot deep inside a Manchester park, she mixed driving instruction with political wisdom. Ease off the gas. Straighten the wheel. New England Republicans claiming to be libertarians are like gay men claiming to be bisexual; who are they fooling?
The stoplight ahead turns red, and Andre panics, pumping the brakes, the Jeep stopping hard seven feet behind the nearest car. On campaign trips an intern usually chauffeurs him around, and he realizes that he’s out of practice. Crashing, dying: neither really worries him, but he’s unsettled by the physics of