I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. In that time I’d delivered a speech to an assembly of high school students who didn’t want to hear it, endured the usual badgering of reporters at a press conference, been assaulted by an old classmate with some kind of voodoo or psychedelic drug, learned of a possible plot to assassinate the president of the United States, spent the night in a parking lot chatting with East Coast answering machines, witnessed a fiery death on a freeway, thought I saw a ghost, and managed to infuriate a former girlfriend. “Not a bad day’s work,” I muttered. Before leaving the restaurant parking lot, I’d tried to reconnect with Christina. She wasn’t answering. This time there wasn’t so much as an answering machine. She must have turned her phone off. I also tried Chief of Staff Ingraham’s number and got his secretary, Margaret. Finally, I thought, I was getting somewhere! Margaret liked me. She’d told me I reminded her of her little brother.
