comatose.” We still were just inside the lodge, and across the room, the club president was unplugging the microphone. I wondered, as Charlie did not seem to, if he could hear us.
“This is all warm-up, Alice,” Hank said, pushing the lodge door open. “Think tonight times a thousand, and that ought to give you some idea.”
Charlie elbowed me lightly. “Don’t bother, Ucks. She’s not easily impressed.”
Standing in the parking lot, Hank said, “An honor meeting you, Alice.” He took my right hand and kissed the back of it. This was both aggressive and parodic, though I wasn’t sure what it was a parody of.
Charlie tossed Hank a set of keys. “Talk in the morning, big guy?”
“You know where to find me,” Hank said. He walked a few feet away, then turned back. “In case you’re worried, Alice, Harry and Janice get back together at the end.”
I must have looked at him blankly, because he pointed toward the novel I still was carrying outside my purse and said, “
is a more mature work than
but frankly, I found both books self-indulgent.”
“You’d know about self-indulgence, huh, Ucks?” Charlie said as Hank headed to his car. Then, as if something had just occurred to him, Charlie said to me, “Hey, you know what? Looks like I need a ride.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, I heard you don’t really live in Madison, so I’m not sure I’d know where to take you.”
“Oh, that.” Charlie waved his arm through the air. “Obviously, you’ve got to live in the district you’re running in, so Hank found me a rental in Houghton. My place in Madison’s in my brother’s name.”
“Very sneaky.”
“Nah, pretty standard, actually. So there’s a burger joint between here and Beaver Dam that’s out of this world—you a girl that eats bacon cheeseburgers?”
“This is sounding a lot like a date, Charlie.”
He grinned. “Not at all. Just two adults of different sexes out on a summer evening, having a conversation.”
As Charlie spoke, Hank was pulling out of the parking lot, and he honked once. “Your campaign manager or whatever he is just gave away the ending of my book,” I said. “Do you realize that?”
Charlie made a fake-menacing expression. “Oh man, Hank’s in deep shit now. Tomorrow I’ll show
which way is up.”
“Seriously,” I said. “There was no reason for that.”
“He was just toying with you. He probably wants to talk to you about books—he’s superbly well read—but he’s too clumsy to say so. As for those of us less intellectually inclined—” Charlie took my hand again, and this time I let him. “How ’bout a burger?”
THE RESTAURANT WAS
called Red’s, and the pine walls were covered in a cheap shiny finish, the seats in our booth black vinyl, the table scratched with initials and declarations of love or enmity. “The onion rings here are stellar,” Charlie said. “If I get an order, are you in?”
I generally steered clear of both onion rings and french fries—I watched my weight—but I nodded, knowing that when they came, I’d be too keyed up to eat more than a few.
Our waitress was over fifty and wore a name tag that said
EVELYN
. “Thanks, sweetheart,” Charlie said as she set down two plastic glasses of ice water. After we’d ordered, he said, “You gonna make that burger rare like I like it? Full of flavor?”
The waitress smiled indulgently. “I’ll tell the cook.”
When she was gone, I said, “Do you know her?”
“In these parts, Alice, I know everyone.” He was grinning his Charlie grin. “Okay, I’ve never seen her in my life. But I bet you dollars to doughnuts if I told her I was running for office, I could win her vote by the end of dinner.”
“Then I guess it’s too bad you’re being secretive. Did you put Hank up to asking me if I’d been married before?”
Charlie whistled. “Boy, he really cuts to the chase. I definitely didn’t put him up to anything of the kind.” I actually believed Charlie—he seemed to be someone who found his own flaws endearing and thus concealed nothing. “I imagine he was vetting you to see if you’re acceptable to date a congressional candidate. He doesn’t understand that the question is whether I’m good enough to date
I probably should have warned you about him—he’s not a master of subtlety, but honest to God, he’s absolutely brilliant. Twenty-seven years old, graduated first in his law school class at UW, and the guy was weaned on the Wisconsin Republican Party. You can’t imagine anyone more devoted. He started interning when he was sixteen, seventeen, and after he graduated college Phi Beta Kappa, he became an assistant to my dad.”
